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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29894583">No Rest for the Wicked</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxthefanboi/pseuds/foxthefanboi'>foxthefanboi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Castiel Is Dead), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Hell Trauma, Mutual Pining, POV First Person, POV Original Female Character, Parent Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 17:48:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>41,676</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29894583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxthefanboi/pseuds/foxthefanboi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Eva has been in love with Sam Winchester since a drunken hook-up a few years ago, and even though they've gotten close working together full-time for the past year, she's pretty sure nothing's going to happen - especially since the deadline of her ten-year hell deal is coming due in a month, something that the Winchesters don't know about yet.</p><p>Meanwhile, trouble is stirring in Hell. With Heaven in pieces after a civil war and Hell in unrest as demons vie for power, the world faces the possibility of a second Apocalypse. Key to the start of the Apocalypse is a five-year-old girl whom Eva had given up for adoption immediately after her birth. As she's the child of Lucifer's vessel, Sam, Dean, and Eva need to find and protect her to prevent the end of the world.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sam Winchester/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Truth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>TL;DR's are included at the end of every chapter, which go over everything that happened, in case you want to review what happens before/after you read, or want to skip over a chapter without missing any important plot points.</p><p>The story is set in a canon-divergent universe which is mainly the same, except that the Leviathans were sent back to Purgatory and Castiel died in the aftermath.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">One month. Thirty days exactly. And then I’m going to hell.</p><p class="p1">I should be working on finding this demon but it’s been hard to focus all day, ever since I woke up and realized the date.</p><p class="p1">I look up from my spot on the motel couch towards Sam and Dean, who are seated at the table, intently clicking through their laptops. Sam notices me looking and gives me a small smile.</p><p class="p1">I force a smile back. I haven’t told them. I’ve been working with them for a year, but neither of them know about my hell deal because I don’t want to worry them.</p><p class="p1">But they’ll find out eventually. Now or when I’m being dragged to hell by hellhounds, they’ll find out. Might as well get it out of the way now, rip off the bandaid—</p><p class="p1">“Found her,” Dean says, tapping on the screen of his laptop. “Three miles away.”</p><p class="p1">The conversation will have to wait. We’ve got a demon to deal with.</p><hr/><p class="p1">She’s just a petite teenage girl with bleach-blond hair, but she’s a teenage girl possessed by a demon.</p><p class="p1">“The legendary Winchesters,” she says, pacing around the edge of the Devil’s Trap we tricked her into. “I guess it’s something of an honor to be killed by you.”</p><p class="p1">“I can do the exorcism,” I tell Sam and Dean, softly enough that she can’t hear us. There’s a good chance the girl’s still alive, so we’re not going the violent route. The demon will live, unfortunately, but Hell is as bad for demons as it is for anyone else, so at least she’ll suffer.</p><p class="p1">“You know the words?” Sam asks.</p><p class="p1">I raise my eyebrows. “Obviously.” Sure, this is the first demon we’ve gone against since I started hunting with them, but I can’t help but be a little insulted. I’ve been hunting for ten years. Of course I know the words.</p><p class="p1">Sam holds up his hands defensively. “Okay, okay. Go for it.”</p><p class="p1">I clear my throat and approach the demon, standing several feet away in front of her.</p><p class="p1">“Ooh, the Winchesters’ pet will be doing the honors,” the demon says.</p><p class="p1">I glare at her. “<em>Omnis immundus spiritus</em>…”</p><p class="p1">A flicker of discomfort crosses her face, but she tamps it down. “Eva, right?”</p><p class="p1">I falter in the spell, startled. A demon has never known my name before.</p><p class="p1">“You know, they’ve really got something special planned for you down there.”</p><p class="p1">Shit. She knows. She knows about my deal. The deal that’s being collected on in a month. The deal I’ve been planning to tell Sam and Dean about when the time was right.</p><p class="p1">And now they’re going to find out from a demon.</p><p class="p1">I redouble my concentration, briefly considering grabbing Sam’s demon knife and just stabbing her. This vessel will survive when the demon’s exorcised, though, so that’s out of the question. “<em>Omnis immundus spiritus,</em>” I start again, speaking as quickly as I can while keeping the words distinct.</p><p class="p1">“A friend of the Winchesters in Hell, again? All the demons are clamoring for just a single chance to torture you. Don’t think I won’t be in line.”</p><p class="p1">“Eva, what’s she talking about?” Dean says, looking back and forth between me and the demon.</p><p class="p1">I ignore him, continuing the spell, louder now, trying to drown out her voice. Almost halfway there.</p><p class="p1">The demon’s expression is pained, but she pushes through it, forcing a smile and continuing to talk, raising her voice to speak over me. “Oh, you haven’t told them about your deal? That’s rich.”</p><p class="p1">I see Sam and Dean look at each other, eyes wide in alarm, but I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the image. I can’t afford to get distracted now. I need to shut her up before she can get out any more information.</p><p class="p1">The last line now. Almost done.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll see you in a month,” the demon says, her voice strained and hoarse.</p><p class="p1">“<em>Te rogamus, audi nos</em>,” I finish.</p><p class="p1">The demon screams, a jet of black smoke pouring from the girl’s mouth and spiraling away out of the room.</p><p class="p1">The scream dies and we stand there in complete silence. I quickly move to the girl’s side, pressing my fingers to her neck to check for a pulse. Good. She’s still alive.</p><p class="p1">Dean crosses his arms and frowns at me. “You have something to tell us?”</p><p class="p1">I shake my head. “Later. We need to get her to a hospital.” Sam and Dean don’t move. “Now,” I say, shooting them a challenging glare.</p><p class="p1">Dean sighs, uncrossing his arms and coming over to pick up the girl so he can carry her to the car. “Fine. Later.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">It’s a tense drive from the hospital back to the motel. Total silence. No radio. Dean’s eyes are fixed on the road. Sam occasionally throws surreptitious glances back at me, his face unreadable. I slouch down in the back seat and cross my arms, running through what to say in my head.</p><p class="p1">Dean pulls into a parking spot in front of our rooms and I hop out of the car, grabbing my backpack and beelining for my room. Maybe I can put this off for just one more night—</p><p class="p1">I unlock and open my door and I’ve almost made it inside and closed the door when Sam pushes back on the door, stopping me from closing it. Damn.</p><p class="p1">“We need to talk,” Sam says, pushing the door open.</p><p class="p1">I step back as he and Dean come into the room.</p><p class="p1">This is not going to be a fun conversation. I spent half an hour mentally preparing in the car and still I’ve got nothing. I pick up a bottle of whiskey from the nightstand, unscrew the lid, and take a couple of gulps. I’m going to need it to get through this.</p><p class="p1">“The demon said you have a deal,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">“And that you have a month,” Sam adds.</p><p class="p1">I take another swallow of booze and go to sit on the bed. “Yeah.”</p><p class="p1">“A crossroads deal?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah.”</p><p class="p1">“Were you planning on telling us this ever?” Dean asks, eyebrows raised.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah.” I look down at one of the roses on the motel’s patterned carpet. “I was waiting for the right time.”</p><p class="p1">Dean scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Right.”</p><p class="p1">“What was your deal?” Sam says, furrowing his brow.</p><p class="p1">“Ten years and my girlfriend’s life.”</p><p class="p1">“Hold on,” Dean says. “I thought you said you got into hunting because you lost your girlfriend.”</p><p class="p1">“I did lose my girlfriend,” I say. “But not because she died. I traded my life for hers after a bad accident and she broke up with me the next day. She’d been cheating on me for months. I got into hunting because I wanted to find a way out of that stupid fucking deal.” I was eighteen and so, completely, maddeningly in love, and I made that deal without even thinking about it. Without even fully understanding what I was dealing with, the extent to which the supernatural world existed.</p><p class="p1">Dean holds up a finger. “So let me get this straight. You’ve known you were headed to the pit for <em>ten years</em> and never thought to mention it even once?”</p><p class="p1">“I didn’t want you to worry.”</p><p class="p1">Dean laughs shortly and looks at Sam. “She didn’t want us to worry. Great.”</p><p class="p1">“Knowing about it months in advance wouldn’t help,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“We could’ve worked to find a way out of it,” Sam says. “We can help.”</p><p class="p1">“You think I haven’t looked for a way out? I have for years. There’s nothing. I’m not the chosen vessel of an archangel. I don’t have that going for me.”</p><p class="p1">“Still—" Sam starts.</p><p class="p1">“Trust me, okay? There’s nothing.”</p><p class="p1">“We still deserved to know,” Sam says. “To… to prepare. Mentally. Or something.”</p><p class="p1">“Well, you know now,” I say. I look away. “If… if you don’t want to work with me anymore, I’d understand. I’ve been keeping it a secret for a long time, and if you don’t trust me, or you don’t want to deal with it, or—“</p><p class="p1">“Are you serious?” Dean says. “We’re not going to leave you alone for your last month. You’re family, and you don’t just leave family behind.”</p><p class="p1">Tears well up in my eyes. “Thanks.”</p><p class="p1">Sam lets out a sigh and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Look, Eva. You really should’ve told us sooner. But we’re gonna help you get through this, okay?” He gives my shoulder a light squeeze, and I put my hand over his, giving him a slight nod.</p><p class="p1">“Thanks, guys.”</p><p class="p1">“Get some rest, kiddo,” Dean says, turning to go. “Long drive home tomorrow.”</p><p class="p1">Sam smiles at me and follows Dean out. The door closes and I pull my knees up to my chest and stare at the door. I really let them down by not telling them, but the important thing is that they know now. It’s a weight off my chest, and I feel a little less alone in facing my fate.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Home</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva and Sam talk about her deal.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">It’s an eighteen-hour drive back to my house, and I’m grateful I brought my own car. Sure, my beige 2003 Honda Civic doesn’t have the class of their ’67 Chevy Impala, but sixteen hours in a small enclosed space with Sam and Dean, who—from what I saw this morning—are going to try to talk about my deal? No thanks.</p><p class="p1">We stop at the same gas stations to refuel and buy snacks, but we don’t talk about the deal.</p><p class="p1">I pull up to my house a little after two in the morning. I’m lit up by the Impala’s headlights pulling up behind my car as I climb out and grab my stuff from the back seat.</p><p class="p1">The place is in eastern Colorado, out on the plains. There’s nothing around for miles, just this two-story, cracked-red-paint house and the big oak tree shadowing it.</p><p class="p1">I’d lived here for a few years with Nora, my mother by bond rather than by blood. She was a mentor and friend in the same way Bobby is to Sam and Dean. After she died last year, she’d left it to me in her will. It hurt a lot at first, getting used to living in the empty house all alone. But now living in her house gives me the sense she’s still here, watching over me.</p><p class="p1">I climb up the stairs and unlock the door, punch in the six-digit code, and press my finger to a fingerprint scanner to unlock the door. Nora was nothing if not careful. Even now, from this perspective, I can see four separate security cameras.</p><p class="p1">The lock clicks open and I open the door, flipping on the light switch.</p><p class="p1">The home still has traces of Nora’s old-lady decorating sense everywhere too. Lace doilies on the tables, bowls of potpourri in every room, rose wallpaper, carpeted bathrooms. And, of course, my decorating sense on top of hers: newspaper articles and photos tacked up on the walls, alcohol bottles on every available surface, the couch covered in a sheet and pillow because that’s where I end up falling asleep most nights when my upstairs bed feels too far away.</p><p class="p1">Sam and Dean come in behind me and close the door.</p><p class="p1">Dean lets out a long breath. “I’m gonna hit the hay. See you guys in the morning.” He stomps up the staircase to the guest room that I’ve kept reserved for him since last year, when he and Sam started working with me.</p><p class="p1">“Night,” I say. I go and sit down on the couch, grabbing a (hopefully clean) whiskey glass and a bottle of whiskey from the coffee table and pouring myself some.</p><p class="p1">I slam back the glass. God. I’ll probably be doing a lot more of this over the next couple weeks. The next month. All the way until…</p><p class="p1">Sam sits down next to me, pulling me out of my thoughts. “You’re not going to bed too?” I ask him.</p><p class="p1">“Not tired yet,” he says. He takes the bottle out of my hand and takes a swig directly from it. I raise an eyebrow and he just shrugs in response before handing it back.</p><p class="p1">“Okay. Suit yourself. But I’m not talking about it.”</p><p class="p1">“Talking helps.”</p><p class="p1">“Avoidance helps.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know it feels that way. But you can’t avoid it forever.”</p><p class="p1">“You know what?” I say, starting to feel irritated. “I’m fine. I’ve been expecting it for so long, I’m not even worried anymore.” Not totally the truth. I’ve had ten years to find out just what’s waiting for me down there. Ten years has been long enough to feel almost numb about it, the fear subdued.</p><p class="p1">“Dean tried to convince me he was fine for months after he sold his soul,” Sam said. “He was lying just as much to himself as to me. You don’t have to do that, Eva. You can talk to me.”</p><p class="p1">I look away. “I’m not Dean. I’m fine.”</p><p class="p1">“No, you’re not Dean, but you are human,” Sam presses. “And you’re family now. A month isn’t a lot of time, and I know you don’t think we can do it, but we can find a way out of this for you.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve been looking for ten years and I’ve found nothing,” I say, my voice flat. I take a long drink directly from the whiskey bottle. It burns the whole way down, but a slow warmth spreads through my body.</p><p class="p1">“Dean made it out. I made it out.”</p><p class="p1">“You both had an angel, and it’s not like he can help me when he’s dead.”</p><p class="p1">Sam clenches his jaw and looks away.</p><p class="p1">Shit. I never met Cas, but he’s still a sore spot for the Winchesters. He died a little over a year ago after betraying the boys, killing thousands of angels, and then releasing souls back into Purgatory—the task that killed him.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry,” I say softly.</p><p class="p1">He sighs. “It’s okay. I mean… You’re right. It’s different with… with Cas gone. But we know more than we ever have before. There has to be something.”</p><p class="p1">“Like what? Give me one idea.”</p><p class="p1">He pauses, then says slowly, “We’ve worked with the King of the Crossroads before.”</p><p class="p1">I let out an exasperated sigh. “Seriously? You’re not on his good side. He’s been on-and-off trying to kill you for almost two years.”</p><p class="p1">“Bobby got his soul back from Crowley,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">That’s news to me. “Really?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. Back when we were trying to stop the apocalypse… Anyway, he did it.”</p><p class="p1">“How?”</p><p class="p1">“He found Crowley’s bones and threatened to burn them.” Sam pauses and rubs the back of his neck. “I guess that option’s off the table. Crowley took his bones back.”</p><p class="p1">“Great.”</p><p class="p1">“That doesn’t mean there’s not a way. Maybe we can strike some type of deal.”</p><p class="p1">“Are you serious? Jesus, Sam. I don’t want you to strike a deal with the King of Hell for me. That’s just stupid.”</p><p class="p1">He lets out a frustrated huff and runs a hand over his face. “I can’t lose you, Eva.”</p><p class="p1">I pause. <em>I</em>, not <em>we</em>. Despite my frustration with this conversation, my heart flutters, and I wonder, for the millionth time, if maybe he does feel something between us. The way I want him to.</p><p class="p1">But he was pretty clear last year, when we started working together, that our one-night-stand five years ago was a fluke.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>I just wanted to clear some things up, if we’re going to be working together again. We’ve both changed a lot since we hooked up, so… I don’t think that should affect our relationship going forward. A fresh start, right?</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Agreed.</em>
</p><p class="p1">I’d been grieving Nora at the time, and a relationship was the furthest thing from my mind. But as I worked with Sam and Dean more, I started falling for Sam more and more. A few months ago when I was drunk, I tried to hook up with him again. <em>I don’t think that’s a good idea</em>, he’d said.</p><p class="p1">Our relationship had changed for good. I’m pretty sure I’ve been solidly in the friend zone for the past year, so I’ve been trying to let it go since then. Trying, and failing.</p><p class="p1">“Eva?” Sam says, pulling me out of my thoughts.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. Uh, sorry. Yeah.”</p><p class="p1">He watches me silently for a few moments, and my cheeks heat up. “Let’s just try talking to Crowley,” he finally says.</p><p class="p1">I’m still a little flustered. “Yeah. Fine.” I take a deep breath, calming myself. “But just to show you that it won’t work.”</p><p class="p1">“As long as we try.”</p><p class="p1">I laugh softly. “Sure.”</p><p class="p1">He sets his hand on mine and gives it a reassuring squeeze. “I’m going to head to bed. Good night, Eva.” He stands up, smiling softly at me before heading upstairs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: After the hunt, they make it back to the house that Eva’s late mentor left for her. Dean goes to bed, but Eva stays up to talk to Sam about ways to get out of the Hell deal. Eva thinks about her hook-up with Sam five years ago, and how things have changed—she’s hopelessly falling for him, but he’s moved on.</p><p>Thoughts and comments appreciated :)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Crowley</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva, Sam, and Dean summon Crowley as a way to get her out of her hell deal.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">When I wake up, I roll over onto my side and stare at the empty spot next to me. I feel a deep ache in my chest. I’m used to it—I’ve only had a handful of flings and hookups over the past couple of years—but it’s still lonely.</p><p class="p3">I close my eyes for a moment and imagine Sam there, like he’d been that one morning five years ago. I smile. It feels nice, thinking about it. At least I have that memory to hold onto.</p><p class="p3">I yawn and roll out of bed. I guess I shouldn’t hope too much for something that’s never going to happen. Not in the rest of my short life, anyway.</p><p class="p3">I take a shower and get dressed—tank, jeans, hair up in a ponytail—and then head downstairs.</p><p class="p3">It’s only seven in the morning, but Dean’s already up and standing at the stove making pancakes. There’s a slowly growing stack of them sitting in the center of the table with a bottle of syrup nearby. I don’t like living with other people, but it has its perks.</p><p class="p3">I walk past him to the fridge and open the door, grabbing a small bottle of vodka from the shelf.</p><p class="p3">“Hey,” Dean says, and he grabs it from my hand as I’m checking the expiration date. “It’s seven in the morning.”</p><p class="p3">“And? Give it back.”</p><p class="p3">“Eat some food and then you can have your booze,” he says, pointing at the plate on the table. I reach for the vodka again but he holds it up and out of reach, so I grumble and go grab a plate and fork to eat.</p><p class="p3">“Sam told me what you talked about last night,” he says, flipping over a pancake.</p><p class="p3">“The uh, the Crowley thing?”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah.”</p><p class="p3">I sigh. “Great.”</p><p class="p3">He stops cooking and turns to look at me. “You don’t sound very optimistic.”</p><p class="p3">“I told Sam last night. There’s no way out. Not for me. And—”</p><p class="p3">“Good morning,” Sam says from the doorway. He’s barefoot, in a v-neck t-shirt and plaid pajama pants, and he has a serious case of bedhead. I bite my lip and look away. How can he look so good without even trying?</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, we were just talking about Eva’s death wish.”</p><p class="p3">“It’s not a death wish. It’s an acceptance of my fate,” I say.</p><p class="p3">Dean doesn’t grace that with a response. “I already gathered the materials to summon him, but we should put some distance between us and here before we use them. Don’t want him to find out about this place.”</p><p class="p3">“It won’t matter if we get murdered as soon as we summon him,” I say.</p><p class="p3">“We’ve dealt with him before. We’ll be fine,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">“No matter what though,” I say, “We’re all in agreement that no more souls are being sold?”</p><p class="p3">“You don’t think we know better than that?” Dean asks, scoffing.</p><p class="p3">I raise my eyebrows. “You really want me to answer that?” All of us know he hadn’t hesitated to sell his soul only a few years ago. While I doubt either of them would go that far for me—some chick they’d been working with a year, rather than their soulmate brother—I just want to clear the air.</p><p class="p3">A couple hours later, we’re pulling up an abandoned cabin two hours from my house. Close enough that it’s not too much of a drive, far enough that any demons we’d come across could find the carefully warded house.</p><p class="p3">Inside the cabin, we set up the spell to summon Crowley, and draw a Devil’s Trap to keep him where we want him while we talk to him.</p><p class="p3">When it’s all set up, I take a step back and look at the setup. Just for a second, I imagine what it would be like to live without this huge weight on me. Not doomed to hell. Not counting down the days until my end. Not regretting, every single day, a mistake I’d made as a naive girl ten years ago.</p><p class="p3">I push that out of my mind. No reason to get my hopes up. This probably isn’t even going to work. I’ve never met Crowley myself—he’s been doing his own thing managing hell ever since Cas’s death—but I know he has bad blood with the Winchesters. Nothing but the most enticing deal or the scariest threats are going to even sway him.</p><p class="p3">A man pops into existence inside the Devil’s Trap in front of us. “Hello, boys,” he says in a British accent, and I start. I’ve summoned demons before, but it still surprises me how suddenly they appear.</p><p class="p3">So this is Crowley. He’s shorter in stature than I would’ve figured based on everything I’ve heard about him. The dry Colorado heat is almost overwhelming today, even inside, but he looks comfortable even in his all-black suit and overcoat.</p><p class="p3">“And girl,” he adds. “I’m Crowley. King of Hell. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”</p><p class="p3">“Um.” I’m not sure what to say. What do you even say to the ruler of the underworld? “Hi.”</p><p class="p3">He smiles at me, though it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Hi.” He turns to Sam and Dean. “So why did the two of you call me here? Surely you remember that I want you dead? Your heads on a plate? Your souls down in the pit for eternal torture?”</p><p class="p3">“It wasn’t them,” I say. “I mean… It was, but it’s for me.”</p><p class="p3">“Oh,” he says. He purses his lips. “I see. A price coming due soon for you, I take it?”</p><p class="p3">“A month.”</p><p class="p3">“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” he says. He paces around the edge of the Devil’s trap, tapping the edge with his heel every so often.</p><p class="p3">“You’re the king of the Crossroads,” Dean says. “You can do something about it.”</p><p class="p3">“First of all,” Crowley says, raising a finger. “It’d do you well to remember I’ve been promoted. I’m the king of <em>Hell</em>. Second of all, give me one good reason why I should do anything for you numbskulls.”</p><p class="p3">“How about a trade?” Sam asks. “What can we give you to drop Eva’s deal?”</p><p class="p3">“Listen,” he says. “I’m not much in the mood for negotiation with the two morons that have gotten in my way, repeatedly, for years. But I have one thing I’d be willing to take in exchange for her soul. Well, two things.”</p><p class="p3">“What?” I ask. My breath is caught in my throat. I know I should stay skeptical, but I’m so close. Maybe it’ll be something reasonable, maybe something that’ll even benefit us both—Crowley’s worked with the boys towards a common goal before, maybe it can happen again.</p><p class="p3">He stops pacing. “I want both of you dead with your souls in Hell. That’s all it would cost.”</p><p class="p3">I try to keep my expression flat, to keep my disappointment from showing through.</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">Crowley smiles. “Hm. You’re out of luck, then.”</p><p class="p3">“How about this,” Dean says. He pulls out the demon blade and flips it over in his hand. “We end you, right here, right now.”</p><p class="p3">Crowley paces around the edge of the Devil’s Trap. “Interesting proposal. But—“ He slams his heel on the ground and the floorboard under his foot snaps, breaking the Devil’s Trap. “You should know by now that I know how to get out of a Devil’s Trap.”</p><p class="p3">Fuck. Worthless cabin with its worthless, decaying wood.</p><p class="p3">I glance at Sam and Dean. They don’t seem to know what to do either.</p><p class="p3">“Look, boys. Girl,” Crowley says. “I wouldn’t go with the threats. I’m a lot more resourceful than our old pal Luci. Try anything again, and I’ll call in Eva’s deal early. And then I’ll come for you.”</p><p class="p3">Sam narrows his eyes. “You can try.”</p><p class="p3">Crowley throws him an exasperated look. “Now, was there anything else you needed? I have places to be, underlings to kill.”</p><p class="p3">Sam, Dean, and I all look at each other. In the five seconds of silence that follow, Crowley seems to take it as a cue that we’re finished, and he vanishes.</p><p class="p3">It went exactly how I’d expected—slightly better, even—but I still can’t help but feel a gnawing disappointment. If it’d worked, somehow… That could’ve been it. I could’ve been saved.</p><p class="p3">Still, I put back up my defensive exterior. “I told you it wouldn’t work.”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, I know you did,” Dean mutters, rolling his eyes. “Just get back in the car.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva, Sam, and Dean summon Crowley and try to threaten him into dropping Eva’s deal, but fail.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Ghost Hunt</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>On a hunt, Eva accidentally lets slip that she had a baby five years ago.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">The Crowley idea was a bust. We spend the next couple days at home—Sam continues looking for a way out of the deal; Dean takes the time off to work on the Impala; and I search for the next hunt. There’s no use moping until I die. That’s been my plan for the past few years: keep hunting until the very end.</p><p class="p3">The third day after our encounter with Crowley, while I’m sitting at the kitchen table looking through potentially supernatural-related news articles, the landline in Nora’s home rings. That number’s only known by other hunters; it’s been ringing a lot less since Nora was killed, but it still gets calls from time to time.</p><p class="p3">I pick it up. “Hello?”</p><p class="p3">“Hi Nora, this is Caroline,” comes the voice from the other end, a woman with a slight Southern accent.</p><p class="p3">“This is actually her friend Eva,” I say. “Nora… Passed away last year.” “Passed away” is a nice way of saying “murdered by werewolves,” but other hunters get it. Death in this life is always violent.</p><p class="p3">“Oh my gosh,” the voice says. “I’m sorry to hear that. She was a good woman.”</p><p class="p3">“I know,” I reply. “Anything I can help you with?”</p><p class="p3">“Oh,” the woman says. “Yeah. A hunt came up, but I’m in the middle of a different one now. I thought I’d call and see if you could put someone on it.”</p><p class="p3">Thank god. Something to get my mind off my quickly upcoming demise. “Yeah, I can do it myself, actually. What are the details?”</p><p class="p3">Ten minutes later, I walk into the living room, where Sam has a number of books open on the coffee table. After Dean’s year before hell, I would’ve thought he’d have looked through every possible option to stop a hell deal. But he’s still looking anyway.</p><p class="p3">“Hey, Sam,” I say. He looks up at me. “Got a new hunt.” I wave the notepad in my hand with my scrawling handwriting on it.</p><p class="p3">“Are you sure you want to—“</p><p class="p3">“Yes,” I say. “Please. I’m started to get a little stir crazy.”</p><p class="p3">“We’ve been here three days.”</p><p class="p3">“I only have so long to get my traveling in.”</p><p class="p3">Sam sighs and shuts the book directly in front of him. “Okay. Sure. Where are we going?”</p><hr/><p class="p3">Fortunately for us, the drive isn’t too far. Just six or so hours south of home. We’re set up at a motel and ready to start investigating in the mid-afternoon.</p><p class="p3">I take some time to get ready for our first stop—the morgue. I stand in front of my mirror to check my appearance, tucking my button-up shirt into my pencil skirt and patting down the stray hairs that haven’t made it into my tidy bun. The fed look is very much so not me. The fed <em>disguise</em> is very much so not me. I generally prefer to go with a lower-profile disguise—a journalist, or a student maybe. The consequences are less severe if I’m caught. But Sam and Dean prefer access over risk, so I follow their lead.</p><p class="p3">Once I’m ready, I let myself into their room. Dean’s lacing up a shoe, and Sam’s straightening his tie.</p><p class="p3">Dean glances up at me. “You look nice,” he says with a wink.</p><p class="p3">I roll my eyes. “You get the coroner’s reports I sent over?” I ask, leaning against the wall next to the door.</p><p class="p3">“Yeah,” Dean says. He clears his throat. “Uh, Three vics. One cut almost in half. Two dead from shock and blood loss with the same wound.” He draws his finger from one ear across his mouth to the other ear. Yeah, I’d seen the pictures. The flesh cut all the way through the cheeks, even the back teeth visible as if in some kind of grisly smile. I’m not looking forward to seeing them in person.</p><p class="p3">“Yeah. Local authorities think a serial killer’s rolled into town.” I smooth down my skirt and turn towards the door. “Come on, clock’s ticking. Let’s go.”</p><hr/><p class="p3">The coroner explains his working theory—something long and sharp was used to slice both the faces and the victim who had been nearly cut in half.</p><p class="p3">Besides that, there aren’t any clues on the body, and the visit does nothing but gross me out.</p><p class="p3">“Thanks for your time,” Sam says when the coroner is done talking to us.</p><p class="p3">“Of course. And…” The coroner pulls a business card out of his pocket and holds it out to me. “Don’t hesitate to give me a call if you have any more questions.” He winks.</p><p class="p3">I reach out to take the business card, but Sam clears his throat and takes it before I can. “<em>We</em> will,” he says. “Thank you.” He shoots the coroner a glare and turns to leave.</p><p class="p3">“That guy was so unprofessional,” Sam says as soon as we’re outside.</p><p class="p3">I suppress a smile. Is he jealous?</p><p class="p3">“Hey, being the protective big brother is my thing,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">The smile drops. Okay, not jealous. Protective.</p><p class="p3">“As much as I appreciate you looking out for me, the ‘protective brother’ thing is kind of sexist, guys,” I say as we reach the car. “I can take care of myself.”</p><p class="p3">Sam frowns. “Sorry.” He rubs the back of his neck. “You’re right. You can handle yourself.”</p><p class="p3">I get into the backseat and cross my arms, still feeling a little bitter. <em>Protective big brother</em>. He’s only a year older than me!</p><p class="p3">I ignore Sam and Dean as they bicker about the music on the radio all the way back to the motel, silent until we’re back inside and working on finding out what the hell could’ve killed those people.</p><p class="p3">Sam and Dean are still in their dress shirts and slacks, but I’ve swapped out of my skirt for a pair of sweats and a loose t-shirt. More comfortable to research this way, books and pamphlets and my laptop all scattered around on Dean’s bed.</p><p class="p3">“We have a couch,” he tells me from the table he and Sam are working at as I shift into a new position on my stomach with my laptop out in front of me.</p><p class="p3">“I’m good.”</p><p class="p3">Dean rolls his eyes but doesn’t bother replying. We both know I’m not moving</p><p class="p3">I spend an hour ruling out any clear supernatural links in this town’s past. It’s a relatively small town and nothing like this has happened before in its eighty years of existence. I spend another ten minutes reading comments on the news articles posted online.</p><p class="p3">There—in a Facebook comment section. A comment by “Abby Otsuka,” including only a link to a Wikipedia article and the words “<em>please be carefull! I saw her by 4</em><span class="s1"><em><sup>th</sup></em></span><em> and pine st.”</em></p><p class="p3">I click open the link. <em>Kuchisake Onna</em>. “Slit-mouthed woman.” Nice. I skim through it. It seems to fit the pattern. A Japanese ghost who confronts people late at night in an encounter that ends either with a slit mouth or being cut in half.I copy the link and send it via text to Sam and Dean. “Check this out,” I say.</p><p class="p3">The both pull open the link on their computers. Sam furrows his brow. “Hm.”</p><p class="p3">“Looks like a promising lead,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">“It was posted by this girl on Facebook,” I say. I click back over to the Facebook comments. “Abby Otsuka. Twelve.”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, that sounds like a reliable source of information,” Dean says, raising an eyebrow at me.</p><p class="p3">“She’s a witness. Hey, what do you think the least intimidating combo would be out of the three of us for a twelve-year-old?” I ask. “Me, obviously.” We’ve found that in general, girls and women are more willing to open up to me. Sam and Dean can do empathetic just fine, but they’re still both over six feet tall and can be pretty intimidating. “Maybe one of you? Or both?”</p><p class="p3">“I’ll go,” Dean says. “Sam, you can stay here and keep looking into other leads, ‘kay?”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Sam says. He clicks the end of his pen distractedly.</p><p class="p3">“Great.” I step into the bathroom and slip back into my FBI suit.</p><p class="p3">As I step out, Dean’s in his jacket and tightening up the loose tie around his neck. He grabs his keys. “Okay. Let’s go.”</p><p class="p3">Fifteen minutes later, we’re pulling up to a nice suburban house. “The home of one Abby Otsuka,” I say. Fifth and Broadway. Two blocks from where she said the sighting was.</p><p class="p3">We climb out of the car and approach the front porch. I straighten my jacket and brush my skirt straight.</p><p class="p3">Dean rings the doorbell. A few seconds later, it opens to reveal a very pregnant woman. Her eyes widen when she sees us. “Can I help you?”</p><p class="p3">We both hold up our FBI badges. “FBI. We’re investigating some local murders.”</p><p class="p3">She swallows, looking back between the two of us nervously. “I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she says.</p><p class="p3">“We were actually hoping to speak with Abby,” I say.</p><p class="p3">“My daughter? Why do you want to talk to her?”</p><p class="p3">“She made a social media comment that indicated she might have seen something relevant to the case,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">“Dammit, Abby,” she mutters more to herself than to us. “Okay. Come inside. I’ll go get her.”</p><p class="p3">We stand just inside the front door as the woman goes upstairs and knocks on an out-of-sight door down the hall. “Abby?” she says. “There’s a couple of… agents… from the FBI here to talk to you. About the recent murders.”</p><p class="p3">There’s a squeak as the door opens and the sound of light footsteps, and a young girl looks down at us from the top of the stairs with huge eyes. “I didn’t do it!” she tells us urgently. “Please don’t arrest me.”</p><p class="p3">I fight the urge to smile. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I say. “We know you didn’t. We just want to talk about what you saw.”</p><p class="p3">She visibly relaxes. “Oh.” She pads down the stairs, her mom following just behind her.</p><p class="p3">“Here,” Abby’s mom says, ushering us into the living room. “Have a seat. Can I get you anything to drink?”</p><p class="p3">“No, thank you,” I say.</p><p class="p3">Abby and her mom sit down on the couch across from the two chairs Dean and I are sitting in. “Is this about the ghost?” Abby asks after a moment.</p><p class="p3">I nod. “You said you saw something in the comments section of an article about the murders. <em>Kuchisake onna,</em> I think?”</p><p class="p3">“<em>Kuchisake onna?</em>” Abby’s mom says. “Abby, are you seriously talking about that again?”</p><p class="p3">“I saw her, Mom!” Abby says.</p><p class="p3">Her mom turns to us. “Sorry. Abby’s imagination can be a little hyperactive sometimes.”</p><p class="p3">“That’s okay,” I say. “We’re still trying to get all the details. Abby, can you describe what you saw?”</p><p class="p3">“So I was at my friend’s.” Her mom sighs like she’s heard this before, multiple times. “And then I was coming home after dark even though”—she glances at her mom sheepishly—“I was supposed to be home before then. She lives just a few blocks away. I was halfway home and then… I started to feel really cold. Like, frost breath and everything. And when I looked back, at the streetlamp behind me, there was this lady standing there with a scarf wrapped over the lower half of her face and she was holding a big set of scissors. She was…” Abby shivers. “Her eyes were big and dark and scary and she was looking right at me. And then the lights flickered and… I didn’t stay there.I’ve never ran so fast in my life.”</p><p class="p3">Dean and I exchange glances. Sounds like a ghost, alright. Sounds exactly like the ghost we were reading about.</p><p class="p3">“Why did you think it was this, uh, <em>kuchisake onna</em>?” Dean asks Abby.</p><p class="p3">Abby counts off on her fingers. “The scarf over her mouth. The scissors. The deaths of those people. You know, that’s what she does. She shows people her cut-open mouth and asks people if they think she’s pretty, and if they say yes, she cuts their faces to be the same as hers.”</p><p class="p3">“And if they say no?” I ask, though I’d already read the answer online less than an hour ago.</p><p class="p3">Abby makes a snipping motion with her index and middle fingers. “She cuts them in half.”</p><p class="p3">Well, I guess that’s what happened to the first victim. Not polite enough to tell a scarred ghost she was beautiful. Not that the results differed. Dead is dead.</p><p class="p3">“My mom told Abby a lot of ghost stories when she was growing up,” Abby’s mom says apologetically. “Just a couple years ago she was trying to convince me that a youkai was living in our basement.”</p><p class="p3">“That was different!” Abby says defensively.</p><p class="p3">“So,” I interrupt. “Would you mind showing us where you saw the woman? You said it’s only about a block away, right?”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah,” Abby says, hopping to her feet. “I can do that. We’ll walk you there.”</p><p class="p3">“Help me up,” Abby’s mom tells Abby. Abby helps pull her mom to her feet. It looks like a lot of effort for the woman, giving the stage of pregnancy she’s in.</p><p class="p3">Abby’s mom lets us out the front door and we start making our way down the sidewalk lined by nicely-groomed lawns. I walk with Abby’s mom, while Dean is a few feet ahead, talking to Abby about other youkai.</p><p class="p3">“How far along are you?” I ask.</p><p class="p3">“About eight months now,” she says.</p><p class="p3">“Wow, getting close,” I say. I pause. My pregnancy from a few years ago—and the resulting kid—isn’t something I talk about often, but sometimes it’s nice to connect with people who get it. But it’s not something I’d brought up yet with Sam and Dean. Dean’s distracted enough by Abby that he won’t be listening, but I keep my voice quiet. “I definitely thought that was the hardest stage. Well, that or the morning sickness.”</p><p class="p3">Abby’s mom laughs and then winces. She puts a hand on her lower back. “The morning sickness was bad, but the back pain is almost unbearable.”</p><p class="p3">“Oh, I definitely understand that. What worked for me was ice and heat. Ice when the pain is more intense, and then heat packs after that. It really helps.”</p><p class="p3">“Oh? I’ll have to try that,” she says.</p><p class="p3">“Here we are,” Abby says, interrupting our conversation. “I was standing over there, by that tree.” She points at a spot about twenty feet down the road. “And she was standing under this light.” She points up at the streetlight above us. “And I was coming from my friend’s house.” She points to a house on the corner about two hundred feet away.</p><p class="p3">“Thanks for showing us, Abby,” Dean says. “Me and my partner are gonna have a look around, okay?”</p><p class="p3">She nods. “I hope you stop her.”</p><p class="p3">Abby’s mom laughs softly at that and ruffles her daughter’s hair.</p><p class="p3">“Thanks for your help. And good luck with the new kid,” I say, nodding at Abby’s mom’s belly and giving her a reassuring smile.</p><p class="p3">“Thanks,” she says, and she and Abby head back to their house, talking in hushed tones to each other and glancing back at us every so often.</p><p class="p3">Dean pulls out an EMF reader and turns it on. There’s immediate loud buzzing. “Definitely a ghost,” Dean concludes.</p><p class="p3">I look around for power lines or something that could be another source of EMF. Nothing around. “Seems like it. Where did the other three deaths happen?”</p><p class="p3">Dean pulls out a printout of a map. All three within four blocks of where we’re standing now. “You got a pen?” Dean asks.</p><p class="p3">I pull one out of my breast pocket and pass it to him. He marks a sloppy X where we’re standing now.</p><p class="p3">“Alright. Let’s get back to Sam and look into this,” Dean says. As we walk back to the Impala, he says, “You seemed to empathize with that mom pretty well.”</p><p class="p3">“Yes,” I say. Shit. So he was listening.</p><p class="p3">“Were you just saying that to, you know, build trust?” he asks, a suspicious edge to his tone.</p><p class="p3">I sigh. We reach the car and I climb in. I don’t answer his question, hoping it’ll be forgotten with the change of scenery from outside to inside the car, but he presses it. “Eva?”</p><p class="p3">I shrug. “I was actually pregnant. A few years ago.”</p><p class="p3">“Wait, so—you have a kid?” Dean asks. He stares at me with raised eyebrows. “Why am I just hearing about this?”</p><p class="p3">“Because it’s none of your business!” I say, sliding down in my seat a little bit.</p><p class="p3">“You’ve given us a rundown of the rest of the details of your life but <em>having a kid</em> is what’s none of our business?”</p><p class="p3">“It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past now, and I don’t like talking about it.” I let out a deep breath. Something catches in my mind. “Just, don’t tell Sam, okay?”</p><p class="p3">“Why not?”</p><p class="p3">“It’s not his business either.”</p><p class="p3">He stares at me for a moment before sighing and putting the car in drive. “Sure,” he says as we pull away from the curb.</p><p class="p3">I make small talk on the way back, trying to get Dean’s mind off what we’d just talked about. What did he think of that new Star Trek movie? Yeah, it was shit compared to the original show. Yes, it is terrible that I’ve never seen Star Trek: The Next Generation.</p><p class="p3">We’ve just made it through the door to the motel when Dean announces to Sam, “Eva has a kid.”</p><p class="p3">So much for the small talk.</p><p class="p3">“What?” Sam asks, alarmed, looking between the two of us.</p><p class="p3">“Jesus Christ, Dean,” I mutter.</p><p class="p3">“Apparently, it’s none of our business, but I, for one, would like to find out more about the well-being of this child.”</p><p class="p3">“Is it true?” Sam asks me.</p><p class="p3">I sit down across from him and sigh, massaging my temples. “Yes.”</p><p class="p3">“Where’s the kid now?”</p><p class="p3">I shrug. “Adopted out the day she was born.”</p><p class="p3">“How long ago?”</p><p class="p3">“Four and a half years. It’s how I met Nora. She’s something of a pregnancy expert in the hunting community.”</p><p class="p3">Sam pauses, looks up at the ceiling in concentration. “Four and a half years,” he repeats. “So nine months before then…”</p><p class="p3">“Yes.”</p><p class="p3">His face pales slightly. “Didn’t we, uh…”</p><p class="p3">“Didn’t you what?” Dean asks, looking back and forth between the two of us.</p><p class="p3">“Yes,” I reply to Sam. I’d thought about it before, when I wondered who the father was—not that I ever cared enough to find out. “The dates do match up on that.”</p><p class="p3">He opens his mouth and then closes it again, not sure what to say.</p><p class="p3">“Oh my god. Sammy, you didn’t,” Dean says, cracking a sly grin. Sam and I both glare at him and he composes himself. “I can’t believe this! Seriously? You hooked up? And neither of you ever told me?”</p><p class="p3">“Shut up,” I say to Dean.</p><p class="p3">“So… is it… mine?” Sam asks slowly.</p><p class="p3">I shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not. I just figured it wouldn’t be my kid, or his, or ours. It would be <em>a</em> kid that would go to some other family and I’d never have to worry about it again.”</p><p class="p3">Sam looks far from placated. He’s still watching me with a disconcerted expression.</p><p class="p3">“Why did you even go through with the pregnancy then?” Dean asks. “Was it a Catholic thing?”</p><p class="p3">“Are you serious?” I say. I stopped being Catholic the second I made a deal with a demon. “No. It was an accident. But then there was a hunt, with a cult of witches who had a weird preoccupation with pregnant women. It was the perfect infiltration opportunity. And by the time I’d broken up the coven, it was too late to not carry it to term.”</p><p class="p3">“Why am I not surprised you committed to having a kid just so you could infiltrate a coven,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">“Hey, it was an opportunity I couldn’t give up.” I sigh. “Can we stop talking about my personal life and get back to work?”</p><p class="p3">“No, no, no. <em>Another</em> big secret? I think this is something we need to talk about,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">Sam clears his throat. “No. Uh, Eva’s right. People are dying. Let’s get to work.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva and the Winchesters find a hunt—they find out they’re looking for kuchisake onna, the slit-mouthed woman of Japanese lore. While speaking with a witness, Eva reveals to Dean that she was pregnant and had a baby almost five years ago; Dean passes on the information to Sam, who’s shocked to realize the baby was born about nine months after his hookup with Eva. Eva tells them she doesn’t know who the father is, that it could’ve been a few different guys, and that it doesn’t matter because the baby was adopted out the day she was born anyway.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Salt and Burn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They stop the ghost; Sam is still upset with Eva for keeping secrets.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">“Not that wire,” Dean says, leaning over my shoulder to watch me try to disarm the antique store’s alarm. His shadow blocks out the street light illuminating what I’m working on.</p>
<p class="p3">I elbow him hard in the ribs.</p>
<p class="p3">“Ow!”</p>
<p class="p3">“I know what I’m doing.” He continues to hover and I glare at him. “Give me some space, please.”</p>
<p class="p3">He backs up but crosses his arms and watches carefully. I look over to Sam for some support—he’s my usual ally when Dean acts like a dick—but he looks away as soon as my eyes meet his. He’s been acting cold ever since he found out about my kid and I wish I’d just kept my damn mouth shut while I was talking to Abby’s mom. I should’ve known Dean would eavesdrop.</p>
<p class="p3">I finish disarming the alarm and step back. “Okay, done. Let’s get this over with.”</p>
<p class="p3">This shop had been at the center of the three incidents, plus Abby’s sighting. Antique shops are usually havens for cursed objects and ghosts, so it seemed like something worth looking into.</p>
<p class="p3">And sure enough…</p>
<p class="p3">“Here it is,” Dean says, stopping in front of a samurai sword set locked in a glass case. We’d seen from our research that it had come in just a couple weeks ago, shortly before the killings had started. It ties in with the legend—samurai carves up his unfaithful wife’s face with a knife, her spirit continues to haunt people even today.</p>
<p class="p3">Dean takes out his EMF reader and tugs out the antenna. There’s an immediate high-pitched <em>whrrrrrr</em>.</p>
<p class="p3">I look at the price tag on the dagger of the set. <em>$3,000.00</em>. “I’m going to feel so bad burning this.”</p>
<p class="p3">Dean whistles. “No kidding.” Still, he pulls out his set of lock picks and works to open up the case. His hand hovers over the dagger and then he pauses. He picks up the sword instead and poses with it in held out front of him. “Pretty cool, huh?” he asks. He swings it around and grins at us. “I’d make a great ninja, right?”</p>
<p class="p3">Sam stares blankly at him until Dean’s smile drops and he puts the sword back. He grabs the dagger and shoots a glare at Sam. “Whatever. Come on.”</p>
<p class="p3">The alley behind the store is secluded enough to burn the dagger here. Dean tosses it on the ground while Sam pulls a blowtorch out of his duffel. I arm myself with an iron crowbar, just in case.</p>
<p class="p3">There’s a flicker at the edge of my vision and I spin.</p>
<p class="p3">There’s a woman there, in a buttoned-up trench coat with long black hair. A blood-stained medical mask covers the bottom half of her face, and her eyes are so pale that it looks like she doesn’t have irises.</p>
<p class="p3">She pulls off the medical mask. Deep incisions run across her cheeks from the corners of her mouth. Her mouth opens as she lets out a screech, the mutilated flesh making me shiver even from a distance.</p>
<p class="p3">She flickers and appears right in front of me, scissors already in motion. I duck out of the way and avoid a fatal hit, but the point of the scissors cuts a long gash down my arm. A sharp pain flares all along my arm and I gasp.</p>
<p class="p3">A second later, another crowbar swings through the ghost and she disappears into a mist.</p>
<p class="p3">“Thanks, Dean,” I say, and he nods.</p>
<p class="p3">“Sam?” Dean asks. “Almost got it?”</p>
<p class="p3">“Almost,” Sam calls back. He has the blowtorch lit and is aiming the flame at the dagger.</p>
<p class="p3">The ghost appears again in front of us and shoves us with supernatural strength, sending both of us flying in opposite directions. She flickers the remaining distance to Dean and stands over him, scissors raised.</p>
<p class="p3">“Sam!” Dean calls.</p>
<p class="p3">I look over to Sam, who’s still torching the dagger but looking at Dean with an urgent concern. The metal of the blade is melting. Any second now.</p>
<p class="p3">The ghost screeches and goes up in flames.</p>
<p class="p3">Dean gets to his feet with a groan. “Good timing.”</p>
<p class="p3">I get up too, clutching the arm where the blood is still flowing. I wince. “I’ll say.”</p>
<p class="p3">“You okay?” Sam asks me.</p>
<p class="p3">“Not really.”</p>
<p class="p3">He walks over to me and looks at the wound. “You’ll be okay. Come on, let’s get back so we can patch you up.”</p>
<hr/>
<p class="p3">Sam’s totally silent as he stitches up the wound in my arm. It could’ve been worse—yeah, it’s a good six inches long, all the way down my upper arm, but it’s not too deep. Dean’s out getting some extra supplies—we hadn’t checked we were stocked up before we went to burn the dagger, and I’m going to need some gauze and bandages if I want to heal up properly.</p>
<p class="p3">“You want to talk about it?” I ask Sam.</p>
<p class="p3">Sam clears his throat. “Let’s just, uh, focus on getting you stitched up first.”</p>
<p class="p3">“No,” I say. “You’ve been acting weird since you found out I had a kid, and we didn’t really get much of a chance to talk about it before, so tell me what’s on your mind.”</p>
<p class="p3">He pauses, his hands hovering over my wound, and then sighs. He drops his hands, still covered in blood, to his lap, and looks directly at me. “I don’t understand why you’d hide something else so big from us. The hell deal, and now this…”</p>
<p class="p3">I swallow. “They were hard things to share.”</p>
<p class="p3">“But who knows what else you’re keeping from us, Eva,” he says. “How are we supposed to trust you when you’d lie about things that are so big?”</p>
<p class="p3">“There’s nothing else, I promise,” I say. “It was just those two things.”</p>
<p class="p3">“Why?”</p>
<p class="p3">“Because…” I hesitate. “After Nora died, and I started working with you, you became the only family I had. I didn’t want to scare you off by telling you that I was the hell-bound potential mother of your child.”</p>
<p class="p3">“You didn’t trust us enough to tell us that, after everything we’d been through?” he asks. “You thought we’d what, just take off as soon as we found out you had some baggage?”</p>
<p class="p3">My throat becomes thick with tears. “No, of course not, I just… I was going to tell you. But the right time never came up, and…”</p>
<p class="p3">“That’s not good enough.”</p>
<p class="p3">My eyes prickle and I sniff. “I know. I know, and I’m sorry.”</p>
<p class="p3">He takes a deep breath and goes back to stitching up my arm. “I just wish you’d told us.”</p>
<p class="p3">“Me too.”</p>
<p class="p3">“And you’re sure there’s nothing else?”</p>
<p class="p3">“Yes.” Except the fact that I’m hopelessly attracted to Sam, but that’s different. That really doesn’t matter, not when I have three weeks left and he doesn’t feel the same way.</p>
<p class="p3">“Just keep us in the loop, okay?”</p>
<p class="p3">I nod.</p>
<p class="p3">Sam finishes stitching up my arm quietly, but it’s a comfortable silence now, not one full of unsaid words.</p>
<p class="p3">The door clicks unlocked and Dean comes in just as Sam snips the thread on the stitching. Dean sets the plastic shopping bag full of medical supplies on the bed next to Sam and looks between the two of us. “I miss anything?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: They find the samurai dagger holding kuchisake onna to the world and salt and burn it, resulting in a fight with the ghost. Eva is injured. While Sam patches her up, he tells her how upset he is that she’s kept not one but two big secrets from them; she assures him that she won’t hide anything else. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Jealous</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva wants to see if she can make Sam jealous.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">“We should go out,” Dean says the next night when we’re back at home.</p><p class="p3">“Out where?” I ask, looking up from my laptop.</p><p class="p3">“You know,” he says. “Out. We’ve done enough business, it’s time to have some fun.”</p><p class="p3">“This <em>is</em> fun,” I say. I gesture at my laptop where I’m searching for my next hunt.</p><p class="p3">Dean walks over and shuts my laptop. I start to protest but he says, “No, it’s not. Come on, think of the good times we could have. Get wasted, hustle some pool, meet some guys? Yeah?”</p><p class="p3">I look up to Sam across the table from me, where he’s sipping some coffee. He shrugs. I guess it could be fun. I’ve made a lot of good memories at dive bars over my years as a hunter, and it’d be good to make a few more before I go out.</p><p class="p3">“Might be one of your last chances,” Dean adds when I’m silent for a little too long, and I slap his arm, half wanting to change my mind.</p><p class="p3">“Seriously? Low blow. Fine. Let’s go out.” I push back my chair and stand up. “Dean, you’re designated driver.”</p><p class="p3">“But—"</p><p class="p3">“The closest bar is twenty minutes away and I’m not sleeping in the Impala again.”</p><p class="p3">“Fine.”</p><p class="p3">“Right now?” Sam asks, looking back and forth between us.</p><p class="p3">“Carpe diem, Sammy. Let’s go.”</p><hr/><p class="p3">“Four shots and a beer is a little much, even for you,” Sam says as we stand near the pool table, watching Dean take money from a couple of overconfident biker dudes.</p><p class="p3">“I think I’m entitled,” I say. I feel good. Really, really good. I’m feeling a little wobbly but I’m not overthinking things and that’s nice. I’m just basking in the atmosphere of this shitty dive bar with the taxidermy heads on the wall and the stickers all over the bar and the scuffed chairs and tables that have to be at least three decades old. There’s enough of a crowd that it’s pretty noisy in here—working-class patrons at the bar talking, a bunch of people who look like they’re just passing through, a couple of college frat boys who probably came here on a bet. A lot of hunting sucks, but the warm, intimate atmosphere of a dive bar is one of the things I do enjoy.</p><p class="p3">I look up and meet Sam’s eyes. He’s so tall, and so gorgeous, and when he gives me a light smile it takes everything I have in me not to confess how I feel right then and there. My heart pounds and I look away, trying to break the moment. I came here to get wasted, not to spend the night thinking about what can never be.</p><p class="p3">I notice his beer’s empty. Good. Great opportunity to escape. “Hey,” I say, tapping his beer bottle. “I’ll go grab us a couple more.”</p><p class="p3">“Sure,” Sam says.</p><p class="p3">I make my way over to the counter. “Two more, please,” I tell the bartender.</p><p class="p3">“Hey,” a voice says from next to me, and I turn. There’s a guy there, leaning against the counter and smiling at me. He’s pretty handsome—my age, blond hair, chiseled jaw, rocking sort of a cowboy look with his cowboy boots. He goes on. “I haven’t seen you here before.”</p><p class="p3">The bartender slides two beers across the counter to me and I nod at him before turning my attention back to the guy. “Yeah, I’m on the road a lot.”</p><p class="p3">“Work?”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, sales. It’s not always an easy gig, but traveling around is usually nice.”</p><p class="p3">“I get that. I’m Lucas, by the way.” He holds out a hand.</p><p class="p3">I take it and shake it. “Eva.”</p><p class="p3">“Nice to meet you. Hey, I don’t want to be too forward, but… are you with one of those guys over there?”</p><p class="p3">He nods in Sam and Dean’s direction.</p><p class="p3">My brain short-circuits. I’m not with Sam. Not really. But I do want to be. But I need some release, and that’s not going to come from him. But do I really want it from anyone else? But maybe it’ll make him jealous. But I don’t <em>want</em> to make him jealous, not when I’m going to Hell in less than a month. But—</p><p class="p3">“No, they’re my brothers. Half-brothers,” I finally say, before I overthink it. “I’m single right now. You interested?” I give him my best flirtatious smile.</p><p class="p3">“I think it would be hard not to be,” he says.</p><p class="p3">“Listen, I’m going to go give this beer to my brother, but I’ll be right back,” I tell him.</p><p class="p3">“Sure.”</p><p class="p3">I go back over to Sam with the beers and pass him his.</p><p class="p3">“Thanks,” he says. He looks across the bar to where Lucas is watching me. “Who’s that?”</p><p class="p3">I haven’t been with a guy in a long time. I want to see how Sam will react. “His name’s Lucas. I think I’m going to get lucky tonight.”</p><p class="p3">Sam raises his eyebrows as he takes a sip of beer. “Oh. Yeah. Um, great. Good luck.”</p><p class="p3">‘Good luck'? I was kind of hoping for at least a little pushback. “I told him you and Dean are my brothers so don’t ruin this for me, okay?”</p><p class="p3">“Sure.” He gives me a flickering smile. “Uh, have a good time. Be safe.”</p><p class="p3">“Thanks,” I say hesitantly, turning away. Just the protective-big-brother thing again. As if I need that.</p><p class="p3">I go back over to Lucas, not looking back at Sam.</p><p class="p3">“So, what does your brother think?” Lucas asks as I slide into the seat next to him. “Do I have his blessing?”</p><p class="p3">I roll my eyes. “He knows I’m a big girl capable of making my own decisions.”</p><p class="p3">Lucas laughs. “I hope so. I wouldn’t want him to beat me up outside the bar for messing with his sister. He’s huge.”</p><p class="p3">I smile. “Understandable. But I promise you’ll be fine.”</p><p class="p3">We chat for half an hour about nothing in particular. Nothing he says sticks well in my mind, but I’ve got enough of a buzz going that I still enjoy it. Every once in a while I glance across the room through the crowd at Sam. He’s got all his attention on watching Dean play pool, now against two biker dudes who look like they’re ready to fight. Of course he wouldn’t be paying attention to me, but it still kind of hurts. I’d even be okay with the protective-big-brother thing right now. Anything, as long as his attention is on me.</p><p class="p3">“Hey,” I say suddenly, sliding my hand over Lucas’s as I come to a decision. I need to stop thinking about something that’s not going to happen and just enjoy the here and now. That’s why we came to this bar, isn’t it?To live in the moment before I’m damned to hell forever? “I’m heading out of town tonight, so do you want to…?” I glance over my shoulder towards the short hallway where the bathrooms are. “Now?”</p><p class="p3">He looks over at Sam and Dean, who are both now deep in conversation with a couple of young women. Sam laughs at something one of them said. I clench my jaw. <em>Fuck him,</em> I think, my thoughts fuzzy. <em>He’s missing out. At least this Lucas guy appreciates me.</em></p><p class="p3">My “brothers” seem adequately distracted enough to Lucas, who takes my hand and pulls me to my feet. “Yeah, let’s go.”</p><p class="p3">The single-occupancy bathroom is poorly-lit and dirty, exactly what you’d expect from a place like this, and exactly the type of place to have quick-and-dirty sex.</p><p class="p3">Lucas kisses me as soon as the door is locked and I kiss him back. I try to push my thoughts away, to just focus on his lips on mine, but it doesn’t work. Even through the drunken haze I’m in, my thoughts just won’t leave Sam. Is he still talking to those girls in the bar? Did he get their numbers?</p><p class="p3">It’s just so unfair. Why the hell did I have to fall for him? Why now?</p><p class="p3">Lucas’s hand starts to slide up under my shirt, but I catch his wrist.</p><p class="p3">“What’s wrong?” he says, pulling away.</p><p class="p3">“I’m sorry,” I tell him, not meeting his eyes. The room is starting to spin and my stomach feels unsettled. “I just… I don’t think I can do this tonight.”</p><p class="p3">“Was it something I did?” he asks.</p><p class="p3">“No,” I say. I shake my head and step away from him. “Sorry. I’m sorry.” I push past him and out the door of the bathroom and stumble my way through the crowd. I shove the door open and take a deep breath. The fresh air helps, and my stomach settles a little bit.</p><p class="p3">I stagger over to the Impala and sit on the hood to wait for Sam and Dean, wondering why on earth I thought this would be fun.</p><p class="p3">Sam and Dean come out only ten minutes later.</p><p class="p3">“We saw you leave. Do we have to go beat up that guy?” Dean says, playful with a serious undertone.</p><p class="p3">I shake my head. I’m too tired for this. “No. Let’s just go home.”</p><p class="p3">I get into the car and rest my head against the window, appreciating the cool glass on my cheek.</p><p class="p3">“You okay?” Sam asks.</p><p class="p3">I nod slightly. It’s not any news to me that he doesn’t want me back. And that’s a good thing. I should be grateful. I can’t start a relationship with him two weeks before I die. His not reciprocating is just making things easier for me. Right?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva, Sam, and Dean go to a bar to have a night out. Eva gets drunk and flirts with another guy to see if Sam will get jealous. Sam doesn’t seem to be jealous, so Eva gets frustrated and decides to have sex with the guy in the bar bathroom. But she can’t stop thinking about Sam, so she leaves.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Demon</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam, Dean, and Eva encounter a dangerous demon.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">I wake up the next morning to a loud knock on my door. My head hurts and I feel sick to my stomach and I am not up to whatever Sam or Dean is going to throw at me this morning, so I tug the covers up over my head and hope they’ll go away.</p><p class="p3">“Eva. You awake?” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">I ignore him.</p><p class="p3">“Bobby called,” Dean continues, even without my response. “New hunt.” A pause, and then the door opens. I’ve been putting off replacing my broken lock but I’m thinking I should get working on that as soon as possible. “Eva,” he repeats.</p><p class="p3">“I don’t want to go on a hunt,” I say, rolling over. “You guys take care of it.”</p><p class="p3">Dean pulls the covers off and I roll back over just to glare at him. He crosses his arms, raising an eyebrow in challenge. “Demon signs in Ohio. Atmospheric changes, cattle mutilations, the works. Something powerful is there.”</p><p class="p3">“So? Why are you telling me at”—I look at the clock on my nightstand—“seven A.M.?”</p><p class="p3">“Because it’s a twenty-hour drive to Ohio and we need to get there ASAP, so let’s go,” he says.</p><p class="p3">“You get me drunk and hungover and then expect me to just go to Ohio to follow a demon? Let someone else take care of it, I want the day off.”</p><p class="p3">“If there’s a way out of your deal, this is how we’re going to get it,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. Okay. Well, every cell in my body is screaming at me to keep sleeping and take the day off, but I’ve got less than a month left and powerful demons don’t show up that often.</p><p class="p3">“Give me half an hour.”</p><p class="p3">He cracks a smile. “Great. Coffee’ll be ready downstairs.”</p><p class="p3">I use up all of the hot water for my shower. I sit on the floor of the tub, feeling miserable. Last night was a mistake. All it did was give me a hangover and remind me that Sam isn’t interested.</p><p class="p3">When I come downstairs fifteen minutes later, Sam and Dean are already drinking coffee at the table. Sam looks completely fine—not even seeming close to as hungover as I am—and it irritates me.</p><p class="p3">I plop down in a chair and pour myself a mug of coffee. “How was your night?” I’d fallen asleep in the car on the way home, so I have no idea how things were for them, how many cute girls they might’ve talked to.</p><p class="p3">“I made four hundred bucks,” Dean says, nodding proudly.</p><p class="p3">“Good for you,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee. I look at Sam. “Looked like you were talking to some cute girls. Get any numbers?”</p><p class="p3">He shrugs. “Wasn’t really interested. Other stuff to focus on, you know?”</p><p class="p3">“Sure,” I say. I push away my coffee cup, not able to handle any more of the bitterness on an empty stomach while I’m already nauseous. We’ll have to get some greasy food on the road. Always a good hangover cure. “So Ohio, huh?”</p><p class="p3">“Yep,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">“Any idea which demon?”</p><p class="p3">“Lilith and Azazel had similar effects in areas they went,” Sam says.</p><p class="p3">“Cool. So near-unkillable demons against which we have no weapons,” I say.</p><p class="p3">“We’ll figure something out,” Dean says with a shrug. He pours another packet of sugar into his coffee.</p><p class="p3">“Do you really think they’d be able to do anything about the deal? Even if they were willing? Crowley made his thoughts pretty clear, and he’s kind of the king of Hell.”</p><p class="p3">“I don’t know,” Sam says. “Crowley’s got to have enemies. Someone who’d be willing to go against him.”</p><p class="p3">“Sure,” I say. Working with a demon, even an enemy of Crowley’s, is one of the worst possible ideas on the planet. But it still ignites that little spark of hope, and I’m not really ready to let go of that yet.</p><hr/><p class="p3">When we roll into town around noon the next day, the death toll has officially risen to six. Whatever this demon is, it’s moving fast.</p><p class="p3">“So, what’s up with the vic?” I ask, as we put the finishing touches on our Fed disguises in our motel room. Sam and I have been avoiding eye contact all day, so I direct the question at Dean, who’s busy lacing up his shoes.</p><p class="p3">He looks up at me. “Sounds like a college kid, died in his dorm room on campus. Roommate found him. Blood everywhere.”</p><p class="p3">“Yikes.”</p><p class="p3">“Yep.” He finishes tying his shoes and stands up, tugging his jacket straight. “Look, I’m gonna go check out the morgue. You two crazy kids have fun at the crime scene.”</p><p class="p3">I swallow. Alone with Sam. This’ll be fine.</p><p class="p3">We’re quiet on the ride over there, but the silence doesn’t seem too awkward. We’re off to a good start. And being busy with work is only going to make it easier.</p><p class="p3">The crime scene is still crowded with officers when we arrive. “I’m agent Ford, this is agent Hamill, we’re with the FBI,” Sam says to an officer who seems to be in charge, and we flash our badges.</p><p class="p3">“Feds already?” He frowns. “It’s only been a day. Can’t you guys give us a little more time to get it under control locally?”</p><p class="p3">“With all due respect, it doesn’t seem very under control at the moment,” I say with a saccharine smile. “But we’ll do our best to get this sorted out.” Without another word, I push past him into the room.</p><p class="p3">The small room with the bunk bed against the wall brings me back to my college days, the mere six months I’d had there before I started monster-hunting full time. It seems like a different life now. I wouldn’t even be able to recognize the girl I was then.</p><p class="p3">This room has some notable differences from the one I stayed in, though. Most notably, the blood-soaked deep into the carpet, a dark reddish-brown now that it’s dried. There’s a huge spot of it, all over the floor. Whatever got him must’ve just about drained him of blood.</p><p class="p3">“Hey,” Sam says, lightly tapping my arm. I turn towards what he’s looking at. The kid’s desk—papers and books strewn messily across it and knocked onto the floor. But—notably—there’s a yellowish powder on the edge of it. “Sulfur.”</p><p class="p3">“A demon then for sure,” I say.</p><p class="p3">We ask around. A powerful enough demon would be able to teleport at will, but most demons can’t, so there’s a fairly good chance someone saw something. Did anyone come into or out of the room beside the victim? Were there any noticeable noises coming from the room?</p><p class="p3">It takes interviewing four neighbors to get the information we need. The kid’s girlfriend had visited him in the hour before his death, not long before the roommate had found him.</p><p class="p3">We needed to run with this before the police caught on and beat us to the punch. There was a good chance this kid’s girlfriend was no longer herself.</p><p class="p3">We follow the trail to the girlfriend’s sorority house; she hadn’t been there in almost twenty-four hours. We do get her car’s license plate number, though. At least that’s something to go on.</p><p class="p3">Dean meets back up with us at the motel. “The count’s at nine, now.”</p><p class="p3">“Jesus. It’s moving fast,” I say.</p><p class="p3">“No kidding.”</p><p class="p3">“What’d you find?” Sam asks.</p><p class="p3">“All of them, throats cut, bled almost dry, hearts ripped out.”</p><p class="p3">“What are they using all that blood for?” I ask.</p><p class="p3">Dean shrugs. “You got me. Some kind of ritual?”</p><p class="p3">“That can’t mean anything good.”</p><p class="p3">“So what’d you two get?”</p><p class="p3">“A license plate for a suspect worth looking into.”</p><p class="p3">Dean pulls out his laptop and clicks through some windows. “All right, give it to me.”</p><p class="p3">Sam reads out the license plate and Dean types it in, then clicks a few more things. He frowns. “Looks like it’s parked outside of a house on the edge of town, as of ten minutes ago.”</p><p class="p3">“That seems sloppy,” Sam says.</p><p class="p3">“Or overconfident,” I counter.</p><p class="p3">“Or,” Dean chimes in, “A trap.”</p><p class="p3">“I hope not,” I mutter.</p><p class="p3">“Hey, check this out,” Dean says, beckoning us over. We both lean in over his shoulder. He rewinds the traffic cam footage until it shows the car pulling up. He presses play as the door opens and a petite woman steps out. She’s dressed in all-black with long black hair and black lipstick, dressed in a very goth vibe. She looks at the camera, and, there: Dean pauses the playback and points to her eyes. “There we go.” All black, all the way to the edges. I squint and look closer. Maybe it’s just the really thick eyeliner—but no. Unmistakably, her whole eyes are black.</p><p class="p3">“We should go, even if it is a trap,” I say. “She’s killing almost once an hour. We need to stop this.”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah, you’re right,” Dean says, shutting the laptop and standing up to tug on his jacket. “Let’s go.”</p><hr/><p class="p2">“Does it seem suspiciously… Quiet to you?” I ask, as the Impala sits across the suburban street from the house the demon’s car is still parked at.</p><p class="p3">Sam holds up his binoculars. “I don’t see any movement.”</p><p class="p3">“How about the houses nearby?”</p><p class="p3">“Nothing there, either.”</p><p class="p3">“So probably a trap,” I say.</p><p class="p3">“Probably.”</p><p class="p3">A scream shatters the night air. It’s coming from inside the house, right out an open window. Sam and Dean jump into action, grabbing guns and the demon knife. I pause, keeping my eyes on the nearby houses. Still, no movement. No lights turning on at the scream in the night.</p><p class="p3">“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this,” I say.</p><p class="p3">“I don’t think any of us are feeling good about it,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">“Look, though,” I nod at one of the houses. “No one else seems to have noticed. You don’t think… Demons?”</p><p class="p3">“Maybe, but someone’s in danger and we have to move,” Dean says.</p><p class="p3">I’m still hesitant, but Sam says, “Dean’s right. Let’s go.”</p><p class="p3">“Wait,” I say, grabbing his arm. “Maybe the scream was just a way to lure us in. Maybe there’s no one to save.”</p><p class="p3">“We can’t take that risk,” Sam says.</p><p class="p3">“And if it’s a trap? With a super-powerful demon?”</p><p class="p3">Sam shrugs. “We’ve gone up against worse odds before.”</p><p class="p3">“<em>You</em> have,” I mutter, but I grab a gun and a knife and tuck a flask of holy water into my jacket pocket and then I’m following behind them as they sprint up to the house. Another scream comes from the house as we reach the porch. Dean kicks open the door, sending splinters flying into the house.</p><p class="p3">We stand just inside the house, listening carefully for any sounds of movement. It’s dark, and even with our eyes adjusted, it’s hard to make anything out.</p><p class="p3">Dean gives hand signals for us to split up and search the house. I’m still feeling uneasy, chills down my spine, but the two of them are right. If someone’s in trouble, we can’t just stand by, even if it is a trap.</p><p class="p3">I creep up the stairs, my steps silent from years of practice. Master bedroom: nothing. Bathroom, even behind the shower curtain: nothing. I don’t hear anything as I sneak from room to room. I’m just about to leave the office, and then—</p><p class="p3">Cool, sharp metal is pressed against my neck. “So, you caught up,” a female voice purrs in my ear. “Took you long enough.”</p><p class="p3">I tense, preparing to maneuver my way out of this one—I can’t believe I was so careless to have gotten caught—but the edge of the blade presses harder, nicking my skin and drawing blood. I inhale sharply. “Yeah, I wouldn’t try that,” she says. “You’re the mom, huh?”</p><p class="p3">“What?” I turn my head slightly. I can see her face, just barely, the thick eyeliner and black lipstick contrasting against her pale skin. <em>The mom?</em></p><p class="p3">The demon ignores me. “I don’t see much need for keeping you around. You’ve played your role. Well, almost.”</p><p class="p3">“My role? And what’s that? What’s your end game?”</p><p class="p3">She laughs. “Like I’m going to tell you.”</p><p class="p3">There’s the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. “Sam! Dean!” I call out before I’m silenced again by the blade pressing close against my windpipe. I barely dare to breathe.</p><p class="p3">The two of them appear a moment later in the doorway to the office, eyes wide at seeing me held at knifepoint by a demon.</p><p class="p3">“The Winchesters. Nice of you to join us.” She takes a few steps back, pulling me with her.</p><p class="p3">“Let her go,” Sam says, his voice wavering slightly.</p><p class="p3">“Hm. I didn’t have to stay this long, you know,” she says. “I just had to keep you distracted for a couple of hours while they finished their work, but...” My stomach drops. This whole thing was a diversion? We didn’t work fast enough, we didn’t do this smart enough, and now we’d failed to stop whatever it was they were doing.</p><p class="p3">“But I wanted to see the looks on your faces when I killed your friend, here.” There’s a sharp, sudden pain as the blade slices quickly across my neck. I gasp—or try to—as the blood starts pouring out, and my legs buckle beneath me.</p><p class="p3">“No!” Sam shouts, already moving with the knife out in front of him, but the demon sweeps her arm and sends Sam and Dean flying against the wall and then she’s gone, out the door and down the stairs.</p><p class="p3">I struggle to breathe, but the only thing entering my lungs is blood. Sam stumbles up and over to my side and presses a cloth against the gash on my neck—“Eva, stay with me, it’s not time yet”—but I know that it’s not going to stop the bleeding, not something like this, and the world is starting to feel kind of fuzzy but I can still feel Sam brush my blood-soaked hair out of my face, smearing blood along my forehead and—“It’s going to be okay, you have to be okay”—and my vision is starting to get dark around the edges, but at least the pain is fading fast, and I feel a sense of calm wash over me because I know I’m dying but at least he’s here and</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: The three hunters go to Ohio to investigate demon signs. They track a demon to a house in the suburbs, which has all the signs of being a trap. Still, they go in; Eva is caught by the demon, who reveals to the three of them that her role was to keep them distracted while other demons finished a ritual. The demon cuts Eva’s throat and flees, and Eva dies.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Hell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam rescues Eva from Hell.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">I don’t know how much time has passed. Weeks. Months. Time blurs together down here, no distinct days, just endless torture. It’s worse than I could’ve imagined. The burning and carving and broken bones are intense, but the hopelessness is worse. The wish for the pain to stop, but knowing it won’t. Not ever.</p><p class="p3">I’m not sure how long it’s been by the time I’m stuck in a dungeon-like cell, beaten and bleeding and hurting and wondering when it’s going to start again.</p><p class="p3">“Eva?”</p><p class="p3">I hadn’t heard the demon approach. I sit up, wincing at the pain running through my body, and look to the door. My eyes widen. Not a demon.</p><p class="p3">“Sam?”</p><p class="p3">“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.” He rushes to my side, kneeling down and gently touching my arm, looking at my injuries. They’re not too bad, considering—a broken arm, a few deep gashes on my side and leg, dark blue-black bruises visible dappled across wherever my skin is showing.</p><p class="p3">“Sam, how did you get there?” I say weakly, reaching up to touch his cheek.</p><p class="p3">He brings up a hand to rest on top of mine. “We found a way to get you out, Eva. We don’t have much time, though. Come on.”</p><p class="p3">He helps me up to my feet, being careful to mind my injuries. He helps support my weight to help me walk, out the door and down the hall. My brain is still fuzzy with pain, but I’m still startled by the chained up bodies around me along the stone walls of the hall. One is stripped of all flesh but still alive, moaning in pain. Another is blackened with burns, their features unrecognizable, and they ask for help in a raspy voice. I’ve been in their position, but seeing it in front of me has never gotten easier.</p><p class="p3">“Almost there,” Sam says, tugging me along. “Come on.”</p><p class="p3">“Almost where?”</p><p class="p3">“A portal out.”</p><p class="p3">We reach the end of the hall. There’s a thick double door there, and he steadies me and lets me stand by myself as he pushes it open. Behind the door there’s a bright light that I can’t see beyond. A portal. I flicker of hope flares within me. Could this really be it? Sam and Dean have found ways to escape hell before. And now they figured out a way to save me.</p><p class="p3">We step through the door and into bright sunlight and a cool, late afternoon. And in front of me…</p><p class="p3">…A cabin. It takes a second but I recognize it as the cabin of one of Sam and Dean’s old hunting friends, one that had died a year or two ago. We’re somewhere in Montana, I think.</p><p class="p3">“Oh my god,” I say. I take a step forward and then briefly look back. The door behind us is gone. “How did you do this? How long has it been?”</p><p class="p3">“Only a couple of months. We finally were able to dig up enough lore on how to get in and out of hell.”</p><p class="p3">“But how am I…” I look down at my body—injured, but real. “Alive? Corporeal?”</p><p class="p3">“Part of the spell. Reconstructed your body when we walked through the door.”</p><p class="p3">“I can’t believe this.”</p><p class="p3">“I know.” He smiles and brushes a lock of hair out of my face. My stomach flutters at his touch. “I’m glad to have you back, Eva.”</p><p class="p3">I smile. “I’m glad to have you back too.” I reach out to pull him into a hug and wince as pain shoots through my side from my wounds.</p><p class="p3">Sam puts a hand on my arm. “Let’s get you patched up before we do anything else.”</p><p class="p3">I find out what’s been happening as Sam stitches up the cuts, applies bandages, provides whiskey and ice packs and heavy pain meds, and sets my arm in as best of an approximation of a cast as he can manage. It’s only been a couple of months in Earth time. Right now, Dean’s on a hunt that Sam had talked him into—saving me from Hell was risky, and Dean wasn’t having it, so Sam sent him away so he could save me himself.</p><p class="p3">They killed the demon that killed me; it had seemed like it was part of something bigger, but it was just a one-off ritual. Business has been more or less the same, though without me there, of course.</p><p class="p3">“There,” Sam says, tucking a bandage into place. “Done.”</p><p class="p3">“Thanks,” I say, and start to stand up, but he puts a hand on my arm, stopping me. “What?”</p><p class="p3">“I have something to say,” he says. He takes a breath, and then slowly, his eyes meet mine. “I should’ve said it sooner. A lot sooner. Hell, I should’ve said it as soon as I found out you were running out of time.”</p><p class="p3">“What are you saying?”</p><p class="p3">He gently cups my face. “I love you.”</p><p class="p3">“What?” I say, almost a whisper.</p><p class="p3">“I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time.” He smiles lightly, his eyes still on mine.</p><p class="p3">“Really?” I say, so soft I can barely hear myself.</p><p class="p3">“Really.”</p><p class="p3">Those are big words, and I’m not ready to say it back. But I can show him how I feel. I grab his shirt and pull him close to kiss him. His lips are so warm and inviting and it’s everything I hoped. Tears slip out of my eyes and down my cheeks. I’m filled with such an overwhelming relief. Just a couple of months ago, I was counting down the days to my death, pining over a man I couldn’t have.</p><p class="p3">And now… It’s all okay. I’m going to be okay. I’m alive. I’m safe. I’m with <em>him</em>.</p><hr/><p class="p3">I go to bed early, taking the cot in the corner of the cabin. Everything still hurts, but a lot less now, thanks to the painkillers that have finally kicked in, and kicked in hard. It almost feels like I’m in a dream, and it feels safe and warm and I’m happy. Sam fusses over me as I lie in bed watching him move around the cabin. He brings me a glass of water, an extra pillow, another blanket.</p><p class="p3">“Are your bandages okay?”</p><p class="p3">“Fine.”</p><p class="p3">“Do you need more pain meds?”</p><p class="p3">“No, I’m okay.”</p><p class="p3">“I’ll leave the bottle here just in case.”</p><p class="p3">“Okay.” I smile. “Now let me get some rest.”</p><p class="p3">“Sure.” He arranges the blankets around me more comfortably, and then gives me a light peck on the lips. “I love you, sweetheart.”</p><p class="p3">“Mm,” I hum as I start to doze off. <em>Sweetheart</em>. It sounds weird, coming from him. But I’m sure it’s because I’ve gone so long without hearing it. It would sound weird from anybody. That’s probably it, I think, as I slip from consciousness.</p><hr/><p class="p3">I wake up to the smell of pancakes and bacon and eggs.</p><p class="p3">I yawn and slip out of bed, cringing at the fresh wave of pain that runs through me. I grab a few pills from the bottle next to the bed and down them. I hope those kick in soon.</p><p class="p3">Still, I get up and go to sit at the cabin’s table, where breakfast is already laid out. Sam is just finishing brewing up some coffee, and he pours it into two mugs and brings it over.</p><p class="p3">“Good morning, beautiful,” he says, kissing the top of my head and sitting down across from me.</p><p class="p3">“You’re really laying it on thick, huh?” I ask, taking a cup of coffee from him. “Pet names <em>and</em> breakfast.”</p><p class="p3">“Of course. You deserve it.” He smiles at me as he sits down. “So I was thinking,” he says, as we get started on breakfast. “What if we gave up hunting?”</p><p class="p3">I choke on my bite of pancakes. Once I finish coughing, I say, “What? Why?”</p><p class="p3">He shrugs. “Isn’t that the life you want? Safe? Free from the pain and loss that comes with the territory? A chance to do what you really want?”</p><p class="p3">I pause. I mean, sure, it’s what every hunter wants, right? An apple-pie life? But it’s always a pipe dream, for all of us. And now that Sam’s suggesting it, seriously suggesting it, it doesn’t sound as appealing as I thought it would. “I guess I’m just sort of used to living like this.”</p><p class="p3">He puts a hand over mine. “Sweetheart, I can’t lose you, not again.”</p><p class="p3">My heart wrenches. I knew my death would be hard on him before I died, but now that I know how he felt the whole time… I couldn’t even imagine what it would’ve been like for me to lose Sam. How much that would hurt, beyond just losing a friend. I understand why he wouldn’t want to do it again.</p><p class="p3">“Okay,” I say, not so much in agreement, but to humor him. “So what would we do? After giving up hunting? You’d become some big shot lawyer and I’d be a school counselor or something? Could we even pull that off?”</p><p class="p3">He shrugs. “I mean, yeah. We could have a house, jobs… kids.”</p><p class="p3">I bite my lip and turn away at the mention of kids. When I’d had my child, I’d known it couldn’t work out since I was a hunter, going to hell in just a few short years. But now, with an unlimited future? Do I want kids? Do I want kids with <em>Sam</em>?</p><p class="p3">“Maybe,” I say finally. “Maybe… I can just heal up first, and then we talk about it more?”</p><p class="p3">“Sure. Sure take your time,” he says, and he gives me that smile that, even though this is such a weird situation, makes my stomach flip.</p><hr/><p class="p3">Throughout the next couple of days, I notice that something seems different about Sam. He seems like more of a romantic than I thought he’d be. Maybe it’s just a part of him I never knew about before. He prepares every meal, redresses my wounds, holds me in his arms at night in the two cots we pushed together, keeps up with the pet names—sweetheart, honey, darling.</p><p class="p3">Near the end of day three, I slip holy water into his drink, pass him a silver fork, try a couple of other methods to check if it’s really him. But it is. It’s him. He must be acting differently because our relationship has changed.</p><p class="p3">My guard slowly lowers and I let myself be happy. I let myself enjoy the time with him while we wait for Dean to finish his hunt and come back. We pass the whole week doing nothing. We watch TV, we read the very few American classics scattered around the cabin, we cuddle on the couch and talk about hypotheticals—who would I be if I never became a hunter? What would his life have looked like if he’d stayed at Stanford? What would have happened if those two people had met?</p><hr/><p class="p3">I hear screams. Thousands of them. Around me, darkness—I can’t see anything but myself, illuminated by the circle of fire closing in around me. My hands feel sticky wet and when I look down, I see my hands are covered in blood. The fire flares, and a blast of heat hits my face.</p><p class="p3">And then I wake up, breathing hard. That’s the first time that’s happened since I’ve gotten back. The first nightmare or, more like a memory. I roll onto my side to look to Sam for comfort. He’s in bed next to me, as usual, but he’s idly fiddling with a knife in his hands. The propane lamp flickering behind him casts ominous shadows over his features. He looks over to meet my eyes and smiles, and my skin crawls at the iciness in his expression.</p><p class="p3">“Nightmare?” he asks.</p><p class="p3">I nod, finding it hard to breathe. This isn’t right, something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong.</p><p class="p3">“It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you,” he says, starting to wrap an arm around me, but I roll out of bed and out of his reach.</p><p class="p3">“Don’t… Don’t touch me,” I say, my voice shaking as I back away from him.</p><p class="p3">He stands up and starts towards me. “Aw, but sweetheart. Didn’t we have a great few days together?” He spins the knife around in his hand as he approaches.</p><p class="p3">“Who are you?”</p><p class="p3">He smiles. “I’m me. Sam Winchester.”</p><p class="p3">“You’re not,” I say, but he doesn’t reply. I bump against the wall next to the fireplace and grab a poker. I hold it in front of myself defensively. “Are you from hell? You came to bring me back?”</p><p class="p3">Not-Sam laughs. “Bring you back? Sweetie, you never left.”</p><p class="p3">I freeze. “What?” No, no, no. This can’t be happening. Sam saved me somehow. I made it out. I <em>made it out.</em></p><p class="p3">Not-Sam moves fast, grabbing the wrist of the hand that’s holding the poker and slamming it against the wall. The poker clatters out of my grasp and he stabs his knife through my now-open hand, pinning it to the wall. I scream and reach to pull out the knife but he grabs my other wrist to stop me.</p><p class="p3">“You know what’s even more delicious than pain?” he says, his face close to mine. “Giving someone hope and then taking it away. Yeah. That look in your eyes right there. You were so close!” He laughs. “You thought you’d made it.”</p><p class="p3">“No,” I whisper, tears spilling from my eyes from the searing pain in my hand.</p><p class="p3">“Yes,” he says, a wicked grin lighting up his face. “Darling, we’re going to have so much fun.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva is in Hell for a long time before Sam saves her and brings her to Rufus’s cabin to recover. He confesses his love for her and takes care of her, but she notices something is off with him, and with the whole situation. Eva eventually realizes this Sam is a demon, and that she never got out of Hell; it was just a ploy to give her hope and then take it away.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Rescue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam and Dean rescue Eva.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p3">My body has just regenerated for the millionth time in the near-complete darkness of hell, but the Sam demon is wasting no time in damaging it again by dragging a knife slowly down my cheek. Tears spring to my eyes involuntarily and stream down my face as I grit my teeth from the pain.</p><p class="p3">It’s been a long time since my “rescue.” Since I felt any hope. This is it for me, for the rest of eternity, tortured by the visage of a man I’d once wanted to be with. “Shh. No need to cry, sweetheart. It’s okay,” Sam says. He stabs the knife through my shoulder and I cry out in pain. “It’s okay.”</p><p class="p3">Suddenly Sam gasps as his body flickers orange-ish red, exposing the bones beneath, and he drops to the ground. There, just behind him, Dean, holding the demon-killing knife. And next to him… Another Sam, eyes wide as he looks at me.</p><p class="p3">I struggle against the chains holding me in place. “Get away from me,” I say. Any change is bad. That means it’s going to get worse. And now they—whoever is in charge of this place—has brought a Dean-appearing demon into it too?</p><p class="p3">“It’s okay, Eva,” Dean says. “We’re here to save you.” He starts working on the chains holding me in place.</p><p class="p3">New Sam is looking down at the demon Sam on the floor, his eyes wide. “Dean, that’s…”</p><p class="p3">“I know. Come on, Sam, we don’t have much time.”</p><p class="p3">Sam starts working on the chains around my other wrist. I tug at the chains, my skin crawling from his proximity, from the anticipation of pain. “Get away!” I say again, but they’re not listening.</p><p class="p3">The chains Dean is working on click off first, and then the ones Sam is working on, and I’m free.</p><p class="p3">I’m mostly in good condition, my wounds minor. I can still get away from them. I immediately strike out at Dean, punching just where I know it’ll knock the breath out of him, and then I quickly disarm him and take his knife. I hold it out in front of me defensively, backing away from the two of them.</p><p class="p3">“What the hell?” Dean says as he catches his breath. “We’re here on a rescue mission!”</p><p class="p3">“You’re not you,” I say. Sam’s eyes flicker to the dead demon on the floor.</p><p class="p3">“I don’t know how long it’s been like this for you”—he gestures at the body—“but it’s actually us this time.”</p><p class="p3">“I don’t believe you.”</p><p class="p3">Sam exhales, frustrated. “Okay. We know stuff about you no demon could know, right?”</p><p class="p3">I don’t reply, just looking between the two of them warily.</p><p class="p3">“Last summer. You said you were going on a hunt by yourself, but you admitted afterwards that you went to a One Direction concert.”</p><p class="p3">“Wow. You never struck me as a boy-band type of girl, Garcia,” Dean says with a grin.</p><p class="p3">I furrow my brow. The demons knew almost everything about me, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they knew this too. But something I’d mentioned once, briefly, and never again? “How do you know that?”</p><p class="p3">“Because it’s us, Eva.” Sam holds out his hand for me to take. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”</p><p class="p3">I want to believe them, but I don’t. It’s some kind of trick. I shake my head. “I don’t trust you.”</p><p class="p3">“You don’t have an option right now,” Dean says. “Reinforcements are going to be here any moment and if you don’t want to get stuck here, I recommend you come with us.”</p><p class="p3">“I don’t…” I start to say. I don’t want to get my hopes up again. I don’t want to have them dashed a second time. I don’t want to even dare to go there.</p><p class="p3">“What do you have to lose?”</p><p class="p3">He’s right. I don’t have to believe this is real. I don’t have to get my hopes up. But I can at least follow them and see where this goes. I finally nod.</p><p class="p3">“Can I have the knife back?” Dean asks.</p><p class="p3">I shake my head. “Not a chance.”</p><p class="p3">Dean sighs. “Okay, but any demons come our way, it’s on you to kill them, okay?”</p><p class="p3">“Fine, whatever. Lead the way.”</p><p class="p3">Hell is huge—spanning hundreds of landscapes, which I know, because I’ve seen so many of them—but Sam and Dean tell me it isn’t far. I follow them through dark corridors lined with cracked skulls, occasionally branching off or leading through archways into other rooms, until we reach a dead end.</p><p class="p3">My heart drops. It was a trap. I knew it. I spin the knife around in my hand, getting ready to fight.</p><p class="p3">“Here,” Dean says, gesturing at a part of the wall. I squint. It’s hard to see in the darkness, but there’s a gap there, hidden in the shadows of the bones around it, and just barely wide enough to fit through. “Come on.” He gestures for me to go first. I shake my head. No way I’m going into whatever is beyond this passage before them.</p><p class="p3">“Sam,” I say, and nod towards the gap. “And then you.”</p><p class="p3">Sam frowns. “Uh, sure. No problem.”</p><p class="p3">He’s huge, so he barely manages to squeeze through the gap and edge his way sideways through it. Dean follows, and finally, I approach the gap. There’s a bend in it, so I can’t see what’s on the other side; Sam and Dean are both out of sight. I take a deep breath and go.</p><p class="p3">It feels claustrophobic and overwhelming and the stab wound in my shoulder is rubbing just barely along the stone. I grit my teeth at the pain and struggle to breathe through the panic that’s overtaking me as I edge my way along. I take a deep breath to slow my beating heart, but only succeed in inhaling what I can only assume is bone dust. I cough and close my eyes. Almost there. I just need to stay calm for a little longer.</p><p class="p3">I make it around the bend and can see light ahead—Sam and Dean are both already out of the narrow passageway we came through. I make it to the edge and step out into the open air, sunlight hitting me for the first time in who-knows-how-long. I hold a hand up to shade my eyes and look up at where the sun is shining through the branches of trees. We seem to be in a forest full of pine trees, the sound of a creek babbling nearby. It’s completely unfamiliar, completely wild and untamed, but so open and free that my fast-beating heart is starting to slow down quickly, even if I’m not in the clear.</p><p class="p3">“Where are we?” I ask, looking at Sam and Dean. They’re both looking around us warily.</p><p class="p3">“Purgatory,” Dean says after a moment.</p><p class="p3">“Purgatory? Like, the place where your angel friend absorbed all the souls from?”</p><p class="p3">“Yes,” Sam says.</p><p class="p3">I look around suspiciously. This is probably just some new mind game. I’ll have to be careful. “So what was your plan?” I ask. “I purge my sins and go to Heaven?”</p><p class="p3">“No,” Sam says. “We found a way to brought you back. It’s…” He takes a deep breath. “It’s kind of complicated. But we’re going to bring your spirit back to Earth through Purgatory, and then resurrect your spirit into human form.”</p><p class="p3">“That doesn’t make sense,” I say, frowning. Why are we going through Purgatory? How can I exist as a spirit on Earth with nothing to tie me there? How are they going to resurrect me when the only beings powerful enough to do so are angels and demons?</p><p class="p3">“We can explain while we walk,” Dean says, and he’s already starting to move, still looking around the area. He seems paranoid. Considering this place is filled the souls of dead monsters, I can only assume he’s looking out for them.</p><p class="p3">I don’t want to have my back turned to Sam, so I wait until he starts moving and then follow him.</p><p class="p3">“So?” I ask. “Explain.”</p><p class="p3">“Okay,” Dean says. “So a couple of months after you bit it, we were hunting a witch. She got away, but we ended up with some of her spell books.” He glances back at me. “One of the spells is a spirit resurrection spell. Some ingredients and some magic words and boom. The spirit’s brought back in a human body. So, Sam thought—we thought—if we could get your spirit back at least, we could get you back.”</p><p class="p3">“That seems incredibly shady,” I say. “How much do you have to sacrifice to get that to work?”</p><p class="p3">“That’s the thing,” Sam says. “Apparently nothing. It just seems to be a magic loophole that this witch found. Some of her notes said that the reapers would patch it up once they found out it was used, but in the meantime, there’s no downside.”</p><p class="p3">I’m skeptical, but I nod. “Okay. Sure. Assuming that’s true, why are we in Purgatory?”</p><p class="p3">“We asked around a little, and Purgatory’s right next to Hell. The best way into Hell without drawing attention is through the passageway we went through,” Dean says. “We made a deal with a rogue reaper to get us here and back. We’re not far from the rendez-vous point.”</p><p class="p3">We walk in silence for another twenty minutes. Everything looks the same to me, but Sam and Dean seem to know the landmarks, because finally we reach a spot where they stop.</p><p class="p3">“We’ll meet him here,” Dean says. “In…” He checks his watch. “An hour.” He leans against a tree and slides down until he’s seated with his back to the tree. “Guess we’ve got some time to pass.”</p><p class="p3">Sam sits down next to him and, tentatively, I sit down about fifteen feet away, the demon knife still clutched tightly in my hand.</p><p class="p3">“Eva…” Sam starts, but he hesitates, looking unsure.</p><p class="p3">“What?”</p><p class="p3">“What happened to you down there? The demon, it looked like… well, me.”</p><p class="p3">“I’m still not sure you’re not a demon,” I say. I fiddle idly with the knife in my hands. If they are demons, this wouldn’t be the real demon-killing knife anyway, but it makes me feel a little more secure having it with me.</p><p class="p3">“But this is different,” Sam says. “We’re here to rescue you.”</p><p class="p3">I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them. “Yeah, well. This isn’t the first time you’ve rescued me.” I keep it a vague <em>you</em>; I’m not ready for them—if it <em>is</em> them—to hear that the demons only presented themselves as Sam</p><p class="p3">“What?” Dean asks. “What do you mean?”</p><p class="p3">“You—or at least, they looked like you—rescued me once before. Got me out of hell. I thought I was safe.” I look away. “They just wanted to watch me feel hope and then take it away.”</p><p class="p3">Dean lets out a long exhale. “Well, that’s certainly… Evil. But you know it’s really us now, right?”</p><p class="p3">“You’d say that even if it wasn’t.”</p><p class="p3">“Give it some time. You’ll see.”</p><p class="p3">“Sure,” I say, but I’m not sure I believe him.</p><p class="p3">Sam and Dean talk softly to each other for the remaining time we’re waiting for the reaper, occasionally throwing glances my way. I watch them carefully for any sign they’re not really who they say they are, and keep an eye out around me too. I don’t want to get ambushed by monsters, though I wouldn’t mind having something to kill right now.</p><p class="p3">Finally, a man materializes in front of us. Based on Sam and Dean’s reaction, this is the reaper, though he seems very ordinary, like someone I would pass on the street and not think twice about. Dark hair, some scruff, t-shirt and a denim jacket. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I do know it wasn’t this.</p><p class="p3">The three of us climb to our feet.</p><p class="p3">“Good,” he says. “You found her.” He approaches me and gives me a once-over, and then waves his hand over me. The cut on my cheek and the stab wound on my shoulder heal immediately, the pain quickly fading away. “Better. Come on.” He holds out a hand. Dean takes it, and then Sam takes his hand. Sam holds out his hand for me. I stare at it for a moment and start to reach for it, but my skin crawls at the proximity to him. I drop my hand and then walk to the reaper’s other side. This guy’s still not safe, but he’s safer, at least. The reaper offers his hand I take it.</p><p class="p3">“Here we go,” the reaper says, and he closes his eyes. The world around us starts to blur, the colors swirling together, and it gets brighter and brighter until…</p><p class="p3">We’re outside in an alley somewhere, the wall behind us covered in graffiti. It’s dark and drizzling rain, but I can’t feel it on my skin. I let go of the reaper’s hand and hold up my own, watching the rain pass right through it.</p><p class="p3">“All back safe and sound.” The reaper smiles at us.</p><p class="p3">“Hold on a minute,” Dean says, looking around. “She’s not here. Our deal was to get all three of us out.”</p><p class="p3">The reaper takes my hand again and Sam’s and Dean’s eyes go right to me. “She’s right here,” he says. “She’s a spirit, remember?” He drops my hand again and I can tell they can’t see me anymore. “Expect me to collect on that favor eventually.” He disappears.</p><p class="p3">“O-kay,” Dean says. He looks in my direction and squints. “Eva, if you’re there, here’s the plan. Just follow us, we’ll take you back to the motel and use this resurrection spell. Got it?”</p><p class="p3">He can’t see me, but I nod anyway. I follow Sam and Dean out of an alley and to the spot where the Impala is parked. Dean stops and looks around. “Do you need to open doors for ghosts?”</p><p class="p3">“It’s polite,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to hear me. He opens the door anyway and I climb in.</p><p class="p3">“Uh, Eva, if you’re here, maybe make some type of sign? So we don’t leave you behind?”</p><p class="p3">I sigh. I’m not sure how much power I’ll have, but I put all my focus and energy into pulling the door closed and just barely manage to get it to do my bidding. It slams shut.</p><p class="p3">“That seems like a sign,” I hear Sam say, his voice muffled outside of the car.</p><p class="p3">Sam and Dean get into the car and drive us to the motel, completely silent. Dean keeps glancing in the rearview mirror and Sam looks back every couple of minutes.</p><p class="p3">“All right, here we are,” Dean says. He gets out of the car and opens my door. I step out. “Okay, are you out?” he asks. “You’d better be out because I’m closing the door.” I roll my eyes. I wish he could see me do it.</p><p class="p3">I look up at the sign of the motel. There’s a flickering neon red ACA CY below the RED ROOF MOTL sign. Seems cheap. Pretty much the type of place we usually stay at.</p><p class="p3">We get into the room and I see some ingredients laid out on the table—herbs, powders, the usual array of items for general spell-casting.</p><p class="p3">Dean rubs his hands together. “Time for some motel-room witchcraft,” he says.</p><p class="p3">I wait with my arms crossed as Dean fills up the tub to the brim in the tiny bathroom, and drops some herbs in.</p><p class="p3">“It’s a pretty straightforward spell,” Sam explains to the room at large because he has no idea where I am. “We just have to submerge yourself fully in the water, and then we say an incantation and then you’re back.”</p><p class="p3">“What if it doesn’t work?” I ask.</p><p class="p3">Sam doesn’t seem to hear me. Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just go through the worst-case scenarios in my head by myself, then. Stuck as a spirit forever, maybe. Brought back as a deformed Frankenstein-like creature. Returning to life corrupted and evil.</p><p class="p3">I’m sure it’ll be fine.</p><p class="p3">“Okay, it’s ready,” Dean says. “Eva…” He looks around but still doesn’t see me. “You can get in the tub. Make sure you’re fully submerged and then, I don’t know. Let us know you’re there. Somehow.”</p><p class="p3">“Easier said than done,” I mutter, but I go into the small bathroom. I climb into the tub and sink down, completely dry. The water doesn’t move around me—it feels just like air. It’s a small tub, so I have to turn my knees awkwardly to the side, but I manage to get fully submerged. Just barely.</p><p class="p3">Now to make myself known. If I can make myself visible, for just a moment… I concentrate on it, trying to imagine myself as tangible in some sense to the living.</p><p class="p3">“There,” Sam says, pointing at the tub. “She was just there. For a second.”</p><p class="p3">Guess it worked.</p><p class="p3">“All yours, Sammy,” Dean says, passing Sam a slip of paper.</p><p class="p3">They both turn around, facing away from me, and Sam reads the incantation from the slip of paper. "<em>Mortuum oritur. Rutum revertitur. Ex spiritum incarnatum est. Oriatur et educatur. Oriatur et educatur.</em>"</p><p class="p3">And suddenly I’m real again. The first thing I notice is that everything sounds distant, the water changing the sound. The second thing I notice is the lack of air in my lungs and the water that I’ve just inhaled through my nose. I sit up, gasping for breath, and water splashes over the edge of the tub. I’m alive. Probably. I glance down at my now-corporeal form. Well, I’m naked now, I guess. Spirit clothes can’t travel to the real world apparently. At least the water’s warm.</p><p class="p3">I climb out of the tub, water splashing the linoleum tile at my feet. I grab a towel from next to the tub and I wrap it around myself. It feels nice to be warm and wet and real and not hurting, for once. “Okay,” I say.</p><p class="p3">Sam and Dean turn around, Sam’s mouth forming a surprised O. “It worked?” he asks.</p><p class="p3">“I guess so.”</p><p class="p3">He holds out his arms slightly like he’s going for a hug and takes a half step towards me, but I shake my head and take a step back. “Don’t touch me.” My voice comes out harsh enough that Sam winces, but I don’t really care. I need them to get the message that I don’t trust them, that I don’t know if they’re real, and that I need space after being hurt by every being around me for years of hell-time.</p><p class="p3">“We did just resurrect you,” Dean tells me. “A little gratitude would be nice.”</p><p class="p3">I force a smile. “Thank you.”</p><p class="p3">Dean shrugs. “I’ll take it.” Then he smiles. “Glad to have you back, kiddo.”</p><p class="p3">If I even <em>am</em> back. “Do I have clothes or am I supposed to wear a towel indefinitely?” I ask.</p><p class="p3">“Oh. Yeah,” Sam says, and he goes to grab a duffel from across the room. He passes it to me and I step back into the bathroom and shut the door. I open up the duffel. It’s filled with an array of my old clothes. Ah, this is nice. Options. I dig through them. Tanks, shorts, a couple of dresses. I settle on a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt. They’re a little scratchy against my skin as I put them on, but at least they’re familiar, and they make me feel safe. Safe-ish.</p><p class="p3">“Okay,” I say stepping back out into the main room. “I’m not sharing a room with you, so let me know if I should leave or if you’re going to.”</p><p class="p3">“Oh, um. Yeah, sure,” Sam says, gathering up his things and stuffing them into his own duffel. Dean does the same. “We’ll grab a room right next door,” Sam says. He pulls out the room keys, my old cell phone, a handgun, and a clip of money—the essentials—and then passes them to me. I gingerly reach out and take them from him. “We can fill you in on everything that happened in the morning, but get some rest first. And if you need anything before then, just knock on our door, or call, or whatever.” An unsure smile flickers on his face. “Welcome back,” he says, before leaving, Dean following behind him.</p><p class="p3">I flop down on one of the beds and stare at the ceiling. It does feel nice to be back. And I really, <em>really</em> hope it’s real this time.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva is back in Hell, being tortured by a demon who looks like Sam, when Sam and Dean show up to rescue her. She’s terrified of Sam after what the Sam look-a-like did to her, and she’s skeptical of both of them, given she’s been “saved” by Sam before, but she hesitantly agrees to follow them out of Hell. They take her through a portal from Hell to Purgatory, and then get a ride back to Earth via a rogue reaper. Eva is still in spirit form, so Sam and Dean perform a resurrection spell to bring her back to corporeal form. </p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Catching Up</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam and Dean catch Eva up on what she missed while she was in Hell - namely, the push for the start of a new apocalypse.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">I don’t sleep much. Nightmares keep me tossing and turning until I finally roll out of bed and make myself a cup of motel coffee.</p><p class="p1">The phone Sam gave me is all charged up now. It’s my old one. Looks like they kept it for the months I was gone. I unlock it. Not a lot of apps here. Internet, phone, texts, photos.</p><p class="p1">With nothing better to do, I click open the photo app. The last picture is from a little over three months ago. I recognize it, one I took just a couple days before I was killed. I took it from the back seat of the Impala, and it catches Sam’s profile in the front passenger seat as he smiles at something Dean had just said.</p><p class="p1">I feel a deep ache in my chest. When I’d taken those pictures, I’d been savoring the butterflies in my stomach from watching the man I was in love with. Now I only feel dulled emotions and a constant state of alertness and anxiety. Years of torture and trauma can have that effect.</p><p class="p1">I flip through a few more pictures. Some crime scene pictures, screenshots of important articles, a few selfies, a couple of Dean, but so many of Sam. Sam, smiling at the camera and giving a thumbs-up. Sam reading, idly chewing on the end of a pen. Sam at a diner, staring out the window. Sam. Sam. Sam.</p><p class="p1">Looking through the pictures brings back memories of hell, and my heart has started to pound so hard that I’m worried it’ll jump right out of my chest. I swipe out of the individual photo (Sam brushing hair out of his face) and click <em>Select All</em>. <em>Delete.</em> The app asks <em>Are you sure?</em> Yes, I’m sure. I have plenty images of Sam in my head already, and I don’t need some pictures on my phone to bring back more.</p><p class="p1">The hours until morning pass slowly. I flip through some news articles, seeing what I missed while I was in the pit. Nothing important. Some political drama. A far-off war. New songs and movies that I don’t really care about.</p><p class="p1">When the sun comes up and I can’t wait any longer, I go to pound on Sam and Dean’s door.</p><p class="p1">“It’s six A.M.,” Dean says as he opens the door, squinting at me groggily.</p><p class="p1">“So?”</p><p class="p1">“Can you go back to sleep? Let us get some peace? Please?”</p><p class="p1">“I can’t sleep,” I tell him.</p><p class="p1">He sighs. He’s been to Hell, he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “Fine. Come in.”</p><p class="p1">I step inside. It’s dark in here, the curtains drawn. I open the darker shade and shine some light in, and Sam looks up from where he’s lying in bed, holding a hand up to block out the sunlight. “What…?”</p><p class="p1">Dean throws a dirty sock at Sam’s head. “Get up. Eva’s here.”</p><p class="p1">Sam groans and sits up in his bed. “Um.” He sees me and quickly brushes his fingers through his hair a few times, improving his bedhead only slightly. “Good morning.”</p><p class="p1">I lean against the wall next to the door. “Yeah. So you said you’d fill me in on what I missed in the morning. And it’s morning.”</p><p class="p1">“Thanks for the update,” Dean says. “Why don’t you have a seat.”</p><p class="p1">I shake my head. “I’m fine.”</p><p class="p1">“O-kay,” he says. He goes to prepare some coffee, and Sam slips out of bed, stretches his arms, and then sits down at the table.</p><p class="p1">“So fill me in,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. So, good news and bad news. The good news is you’re back.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. I appreciate that,” I say dryly.</p><p class="p1">“The bad news is there’s a faction of Lucifer-loyal demons working with a faction of Raphael-loyal angels trying to break sixty-six seals to reopen the cage.”</p><p class="p1">“<em>What</em>?” I say. I’m gone for three months and the end of the world is already on its way? Again? “Sixty-six seals, like the sixty-six that were broken three years ago?”</p><p class="p1">“Only sixty-six needed to be broken to open the cage, but a few hundred more seals exist,” Sam says. “So they have plenty more to pick from. We think they found a new first and last seal.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay, so what are they? If we can stop those, we can stop the whole thing.”</p><p class="p1">Sam rubs the back of his head. “They’re about thirty seals in already. We don’t know what the last one is.”</p><p class="p1">My stomach drops. I thought I’d be coming back to how things were, but it looks like I’ve been dropped right in the middle of stopping the end of the world. “That many?” I furrow my brow.</p><p class="p1">Sam continues. “The other thing is that they’re being lead by the demon that killed you. Her name is Isabel.”</p><p class="p1">“<em>What</em>?” I say again. I try to think back on what happened that night, but I can’t bring back details. All I remember from that night is the pain and the fear and dying in Sam’s arms.</p><p class="p1">Dean nods. “After you, uh, bit it, we did some followup. On her and the ritual she mentioned.”</p><p class="p1">“Ritual?” I ask. That sounds vaguely familiar.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Sam says. “We didn’t get there in time to stop it, but we found a single straggler cleaning up a ritual, and we got information from him.”</p><p class="p1">“And he told you about this—this Isabel, and the seals, and everything?”</p><p class="p1">“He told us was that the ritual was to open Lucifer’s cage,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">I frown. “Why would they try to open the cage with a ritual if they already knew they had to break the seals? Were they going for a shortcut?”</p><p class="p1">“The demon said the ritual had been a success,” Sam says. “So yeah, maybe that was the goal. But if Lucifer or Michael were back, we’d be seeing a lot more natural disasters.”</p><p class="p1">I take a sip of the coffee Dean gave me. “So what does that mean? They wanted it to fail? It was part of a bigger diversion?”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t know,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">“You’ve got connections in Hell, did you talk to Crowley?”</p><p class="p1">“We tried,” Sam says. “He seems to know about as much as us. Then he told us he didn’t need two problems at once and sent a hellhound after us.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” I say. “So it looks like the enemy-of-my-enemy thing is off the table.”</p><p class="p1">“Looks like it.”</p><p class="p1">“So what now?” I ask, crossing my arms.</p><p class="p1">Sam leans back in his chair and shrugs. “We’ve got no leads. We can find a hunt, or take some time off for you to recover, or…”</p><p class="p1">“No,” I say. “We find more leads. Obviously.”</p><p class="p1">“Eva, believe us, we’ve tracked every lead there is already,” Dean says, crossing his arms. “After that first demon, we did a lot of digging. Have been for the past couple of months. We found every demon and angel that knew anything about what was going on and interrogated them, but we got nothing more than what we told you. We can’t do anything but wait for them to make another move.”</p><p class="p1">I stare at the ground. What are my options, then? I can’t figure out the end of the world if all we’ve got is dead ends. I don’t want time off to dwell on Hell. There’s not a chance that I’m going to work with Sam and Dean again.</p><p class="p1">“Give me two hundred bucks and a couple of weapons so I can get home, and I’ll get out of your hair,” I say.</p><p class="p1">Sam raises his eyebrows. “You’re not seriously going to take off, are you?”</p><p class="p1">I shrug. “I mean. Yeah.”</p><p class="p1">“You just got back,” Sam says. “You’re going to need support.”</p><p class="p1">“Sure,” I say. “Just not from you.”</p><p class="p1">Sam clenches his jaw and turns away. “<em>We</em> just got you back,” he says softly, almost too quiet for me to hear.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” I say, not feeling sorry at all. “I just need some space.”</p><p class="p1">Dean sighs. “Yeah. Sure. I get it. We’ll drop you off at your house and let you do your own thing.”</p><p class="p1">“Seriously?” Sam asks Dean.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. She can take care of herself. She’ll be okay.” Dean turns to look at me. “When do you want to go back?”</p><p class="p1">“Right now,” I say, feeling some relief at being able to get away from them and be on my own. I give pajama-clad Dean a once-over. “Or, as soon as you’re ready.”</p><p class="p1">Dean rolls his eyes. “Sure. Give your taxi service thirty minutes and we can go.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: When Eva speaks with Sam and Dean, she finds out that Raphael- and Michael-loyal angels and Lucifer-loyal demons are working together again to break a new sixty-six seals; they’ve found a new first and last seal, and are about thirty seals in, though Sam and Dean don’t know what the last one will be. Those breaking the seals are led by Isabel, the demon who killed Eva. In the ritual that took place on the night Eva died, a demon reported that it was a successful ritual to open the cage, but based on the lack of notable apocalyptic events, Sam and Dean concluded Michael and Lucifer weren’t free. Sam and Dean tell Eva they’ve followed up on every lead they have and there’s nothing else to find out, so Eva tells them she’s going to go off on her own and not stay with them.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Gone</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva continues hunting without Sam and Dean, but can't seem to truly escape from their influence.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">It’s been a couple of months since I split. I’ve been keeping myself busy and distracted with hunting, painkillers, and moderate alcoholism. I wish finishing a hunt brought the same satisfaction it used to. Now I finish a job and I feel empty. There’s no one to celebrate with, nothing to celebrate for. Just another day on the job.</p><p class="p1">Sam and Dean check in periodically, brief updates on where they’re staying now. Town names, and offers to let me hunt with them if I want. I ignore the texts.</p><p class="p1">I’m doing some digging to find my next hunt when I come across something. Demon signs. Laramie, Wyoming. I lean forward in my chair. Cattle mutilations, weird weather. Demon signs mean demonic presence and not necessarily demonic activity, but I click through a few more links to check. A murder, just last night, in an otherwise low-crime town. This is definitely something.</p><p class="p1">I’m out the door in thirty minutes and headed up to Wyoming. It’s only a four-hour drive. Not bad, considering the trips I’ve made in the past. Uncomfortably close to the Winchesters, who are working a job two hours north of Laramie. But it shouldn’t be a problem.</p><p class="p1">Seeing the body at the morgue is going to be my first stop, so I check into a motel and change into my FBI suit.</p><p class="p1">My phone buzzes just as I’m about to head out. It’s from Dean. <em>We turned on the GPS on your phone. You coming to join us?</em></p><p class="p1"><em>No. Stop tracking me, </em>I send back.</p><p class="p1"><em>Maybe we can join you instead?</em> Dean texts.</p><p class="p1">I sigh and turn off my phone so they can’t keep tracking me. I made it clear I wanted space and this is how they act?</p><p class="p1">The morgue doesn’t reveal any interesting information; I’ll have to look for more leads somewhere else. But it’s on my way out that something catches my eye. I’m walking back to my car across the parking lot when a man bumps into me.</p><p class="p1">“Watch where you’re going,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry,” he says, glancing at me, and I swear for a second his eyes flare a light gold. That’s not normal. Not demonic, I don’t think, but definitely not normal. I take a few more steps towards my car before I turn and watch him go. He brushes his sandy-blond hair out of his eyes and crosses the street towards a park, and then I start to follow.</p><p class="p1">I keep a low-profile, but he doesn’t seem to be making any effort to avoid being followed. Not looking back, following a straight path. He seems pretty normal. I’m probably just following a guy on his daily walk. The golden flash in his eyes must have been a trick of light.</p><p class="p1">He follows a side path, out of sight and into a wooded area. I fall back a little bit, and then follow him.</p><p class="p1">He’s gone when I reach the path. There’s no one here. I hesitate. Where could he have gone? Is there another path? My intuition tells me something is off. If I’m wrong, then I’m not in danger. If I’m right, then I’ll find something out about the case. I need to keep going.</p><p class="p1">I follow the path deeper into the grove of trees, staying alert. A sound catches my attention off the path, and I see a figure disappear into the brush. I follow as quietly as I can, pushing past branches and going further into the trees.</p><p class="p1">I feel a sudden presence behind me but before I can turn, there’s a sharp jab in my neck. My hand flies up and I feel a needle and syringe there. The world is already starting to get blurry, my eyelids suddenly starting to feel so heavy. I’ve been drugged. I should’ve seen this coming. It wasn’t safe after all. And now I’m probably going to die. Again.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: A couple of months have passed since Eva split with the Winchesters, and she’s been hunting alone since. Eva investigates a town surrounded by demon signs. She sees a guy with eyes that briefly glow gold, so she follows him, but in the process she is ambushed and knocked unconscious.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Bait</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva's been captured by the stranger and is being used as bait for Sam and Dean.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">My head is pounding when I wake up, and my whole body is aching. I’m sitting on a really hard surface—concrete?—and I feel my hands cuffed around a pole behind my back, my wrists sore. My mouth is dry and when I try to lick my lips I find that I’m gagged.</p><p class="p1">It takes me a few more moments to visually take in my surroundings. I’m in a cleared-out room that must be somewhere in what seems to be an abandoned factory, completely empty except for a few concrete columns and railings all around the edges of the room. The concrete floor itself is a dark gray, marked with unidentifiable stains that must range from grease to coffee to who knows what else. Blood, probably.</p><p class="p1">I look up. There’s a couple of burly guys leaning against a wall, and the guy I’d been following is pacing near them, talking on the phone. “You got them? Okay, good. Just... Make sure they don’t try anything, okay? They’re resourceful.” He hangs up and puts his phone in his pocket.</p><p class="p1">They all look over to me as I start to wake up and adjust myself a little, still taking in my surroundings.</p><p class="p1">“You’re up,” the guy says. “Good timing.”</p><p class="p1">I try to ask who he is through the gag but all that comes out is muffled grumbling.</p><p class="p1">His face is passive as he looks at me, not betraying any emotion. “Don’t worry, you’ve played your part. They’re almost here.”</p><p class="p1">I bang my head back against the pole behind me and immediately wince. That didn’t help the already bad headache, but god. I know, I just know, that he’s talking about Sam and Dean. Did these guys use me as bait? Why the hell would Sam and Dean fall for that anyway?</p><p class="p1">I spend the next minutes working through the brain fog left over from the sedatives, trying to figure a way out of this. The small lockpick I keep in my sleeve for situations like this is gone. The pocket knife from my back pocket has been taken away. The cuffs are too tight to slip out, even if I’m willing to accept some injury to try to get out of them.</p><p class="p1">I’m taking note of the exits when I hear Dean’s voice.</p><p class="p1">“Watch it!” he says from just out of view, and a moment later, he’s coming through one of the doors, hands up behind his head as a demon holding a gun roughly pushes him forward. They’re followed by Sam, who also has a couple of armed demons behind him.</p><p class="p1">Sam and Dean freeze as soon as they see the man in charge.</p><p class="p1">“Adam?” Dean asks, shock the only thing registering in his voice. Not angry, not threatening, just shocked.</p><p class="p1"><em>Adam</em>. They’d mentioned him very, very briefly once, when they gave me the rundown of what had happened at Stull Cemetery, that day several years ago. The half-brother used as Michael’s vessel, pulled into the cage along with Michael, Lucifer, and Sam. The half-brother they left in Hell when Dean had to make the choice between him or Sam.</p><p class="p1">“Hey, guys,” Adam says. He smiles coldly. “Long time no see. Nice to see you topside, Sam.”</p><p class="p1">“What—” Sam starts to say, but a demon behind him pushes him forward. His eyes fall on me a second later and I see his eyes widen. He drifts a little towards me, but the demon behind him shoves him back on track away from me. The demons behind Sam and Dean push them against two separate beams in the open room and cuff their hands behind them.</p><p class="p1">“Why are you working with demons, man?” Dean asks, tugging at his cuffs absently while he looks at Adam.</p><p class="p1">I tilt my head tiredly back against the pole behind me again and feel a slight pull at my hair. A hairpin. I forgot I had a hairpin in. This is something I can work with. Subtly, barely moving, I rub my head against the pole behind me, working the hairpin out of my hair.</p><p class="p1">“We have an arrangement,” Adam says, answering Dean’s question. Adam turns to one of the demons in the room. “You can go. I’ll let you know if I need you.”</p><p class="p1">The demon nods and gestures for the others to follow. They file out of the room.</p><p class="p1">Good. Less eyes to notice as I finally manage to get my hair pin to fall to the ground. I pick it up while Adam is distracted and start to pick at the locks on the cuffs.</p><p class="p1">“Seriously, Adam,” Dean says. “Whatever they’re offering isn’t worth it.”</p><p class="p1">“This part doesn’t have to do with them,” Adam says, gesturing vaguely in the direction of where the demons had left.</p><p class="p1">“‘This part’?”</p><p class="p1">“Revenge.”</p><p class="p1">Sam and Dean exchange worried glances.</p><p class="p1">“Revenge?” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, I’ve got a list of grievances. You leaving me to rot is at the top of the list.”</p><p class="p1">“Adam,” Dean starts. “You have no idea how sorry we are. How sorry I am. We never meant for…”</p><p class="p1">“Shut up,” Adam says, his voice wavering. “It doesn’t matter what you <em>meant</em> to happen. It matters what you <em>let</em> happen.”</p><p class="p1">“Adam, please,” Sam says. “You know that what happened wasn’t fair. Not for any of us, but…”</p><p class="p1">“How can you say that?” Adam says. His voice cracks. “How can you put us at the same level? It wasn’t fair for <em>me</em>. It wasn’t supposed to be me that day. I wasn’t supposed to be Michael’s vessel. That was <em>his</em> job.” He nods at Dean. “So spare me the ‘it wasn’t fair for us’ crap. I went from heaven to the deepest pits of hell because of <em>you</em>. Because of both of you.”</p><p class="p1">As he finishes talking, he takes out a gun and cocks it. He looks angry, but also… Scared? Unsure? Still, he’s unpredictable at this stage and I need to do something. I finish unlocking my cuffs with a click but don’t give any indication I’m free.</p><p class="p1">“You don’t need to do this, Adam,” Dean says, his voice steady.</p><p class="p1">“This is what you deserve,” Adam says. He curls his free hand into a fist. His face twists in pain. “You talk so much about how important family is. How could you forget me?”</p><p class="p1">“Adam…” Sam starts, but he seems lost for words.</p><p class="p1">Adam composes himself again. “I’m going to make you both suffer. You’re going to know just a <em>fraction</em> of I went through.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re making a mistake,” Dean says warningly.</p><p class="p1">Adam shakes his head, gripping the gun a little tighter and holding it up, pointed towards Dean, but he looks conflicted.</p><p class="p1">“Sam wasn’t himself when he got back,” Dean continues. “Not for a long time. But we fixed it. And we can help you too. We can help you let go of this, get past the pain, if you just trust us.”</p><p class="p1">Adam slowly lowers the gun. He clenches his jaw and turns around to hide his expression.</p><p class="p1">Now’s my chance. He’s ten feet away. If I move quietly, I can sneak up on him and take him out before he reacts.</p><p class="p1">I pull out my gag and, careful not to jangle the handcuff still on one of my wrists, I start to move.</p><p class="p1">Sam notices my movement and shakes his head at me, his eyes wide. Dean notices a moment later and mouths <em>NO.</em> I ignore them. I’m doing what has to be done. Sure, he’s their brother. But he’s threatening our lives.</p><p class="p1">I’m up on my feet, crouching while I stalk towards him, and I’m halfway there when my foot connects with a pebble that bounces away with a clattering sound. Adam spins around, eyes wide, gun back up, and there’s a <em>bang</em> as it goes off.</p><p class="p1">A sharp pain tears along my side and I gasp, stumbling back and falling to the floor.</p><p class="p1">“Eva!” Sam shouts.</p><p class="p1">My hands drop to my side where there’s blood already starting to flow through my fingers. I don’t <em>think</em> it hit anything important, but the world’s already starting to spin a little bit. I slump the rest of the way to the ground, fully lying down.</p><p class="p1">I look up at Adam, who’s still standing with the gun raised. But he doesn’t look triumphant or angry or any other reaction I might have expected. He looks panicked. When I meet his eyes, he cringes.</p><p class="p1">A couple of demons run back into the room at the noise, and Adam pulls himself together. “I’m not done here. Go,” Adam says coldly to them, pointing back towards the door. Seeing their boss isn’t hurt, they reluctantly turn and leave.</p><p class="p1">“Eva!” Sam says. He pulls frantically at his cuffs. “Adam, let us go so we can help her!”</p><p class="p1">Adam finally goes into motion. He sets the gun down on the floor and goes to free Sam and Dean. All three of them rush over to me. Sam kneels at my side and it hits me, an image of him crouching over me and smiling maliciously at me, digging a finger into a deep wound—just like this one—that he’d carved into my side himself.</p><p class="p1">“Get away from me!” I say, using my quickly draining energy to push myself away from Sam. His jaw clenches but he stands back up and moves away, out of sight.</p><p class="p1">“Eva, it’s going to be all right, okay?” Dean says, taking my blood-covered hand in his. Wow, I guess I’m losing blood faster than I thought. I’m starting to feel cold and light-headed and…</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” Adam says. “I didn’t mean to.”</p><p class="p1">“I know,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">“Here, can I…?” Adam’s hands hover over the wound.</p><p class="p1">“What are you doing?” I ask, raising my head up to look at him.</p><p class="p1">His hand glows with a soft golden light and the pain on my side subsides. I close my eyes and the warmth and comfort emanating from his hand spreads throughout me, lessening the hurt and cold all over my body.</p><p class="p1">“What did you do?” I hear Dean ask.</p><p class="p1">“A gift from Michael.”</p><p class="p1">I blink my eyes open briefly in surprise. There’s some blood trickling from Adam’s nose, and he absently wipes it away with the back of his hand. He looks worried and… sorry.</p><p class="p1">I wonder distantly if I should thank him but he’s the one who shot me in the first place so it seems a little unnecessary. I doze off wondering what he meant by “a gift” and what that meant and before I can put together another coherent thought, I’m gone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva is captured by the stranger and by demons, and is used as bait for the Winchesters. When Sam and Dean arrive, also captured, they recognize the stranger as their half-brother Adam. Adam sends away the demons and tells Sam and Dean he wants revenge against them, for all the pain they caused him, but he seems conflicted. Eva manages to get out of her cuffs and goes to attack him, but when he is surprised by her, he lets off a shot that hits Eva's side. She's down and fading quickly from the blood loss. Adam is clearly shocked and guilty and frees Sam and Dean so they can help Eva; Adam uses a power he describes as "a gift from Michael" and heals her.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Recovery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva recovers from being wounded, and Bobby, Sam, and Dean tell her about the last seal.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">I wake up to a stream of light coming through the curtains and falling directly across my eyes. I yawn and sit up. I’m somewhere unfamiliar. A bed in a room with dusty furniture, ancient books stacked up against every wall.</p><p class="p1">I’m wearing a loose, soft army t-shirt and sweats and—thankfully my original underwear, though my bra is gone. I’m really hoping it’s just because it was covered in blood and had to go.</p><p class="p1">I look to the side and jump. Dean’s sitting in the chair in the corner, watching me.</p><p class="p1">“Oh my god,” I gasp, putting a hand over my chest. “Creepy, much?”</p><p class="p1">He smiles. “Wanted to make sure you were okay.”</p><p class="p1">“How long have I been out?”</p><p class="p1">“About twenty hours, at this point.”</p><p class="p1">Twenty hours. Yikes. But could definitely be worse. Definitely <em>has</em> been worse.</p><p class="p1">“Where am I?”</p><p class="p1">“Bobby’s house.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh.” Bobby’s house. I’d met him a few times—hard not to, given he’s Sam and Dean’s adoptive father—but I have a strong aversion to the Dakotas that’s kept me away from his house itself. Still, it would explain the musty books around the room.</p><p class="p1">“And Sam? Where’s he at?”</p><p class="p1">“Other room. He’s giving you some space.”</p><p class="p1">“Why—” I start to say, and then I remember it, a distant memory like a dream. <em>Get away from me</em>. Despite everything, I feel guilty. I didn’t want to work with him, but I could give him a little more slack, considering that logically, I know what happened in Hell wasn’t him. “Oh.” I clear my throat and change the subject. “How did you guys end up there, anyway?”</p><p class="p1">Dean fiddles with his phone in his hands. “Got a picture of you unconscious and a text saying to meet at the given coordinates or you’d die.”</p><p class="p1">“You shouldn’t have come. You knew it was a trap.”</p><p class="p1">Dean shrugs. “We could never leave you like that.”</p><p class="p1">“Come on. I’m not worth it. Not anymore.”</p><p class="p1">“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”</p><p class="p1">“I haven’t spoken to you in two months. Isn’t it clear that we don’t have a relationship anymore?” I say.</p><p class="p1">Dean looks at me like I’m crazy. “That’s not how it works.” He sighs and stands up before I can object. “Bobby and Sam are downstairs. We’ve got a lot to talk about, let’s go.” He starts to head to the door.</p><p class="p1">I slide out of bed but frown.</p><p class="p1">“What?” he asks.</p><p class="p1">“Can I have, I don’t know, a bra and some pants and maybe a pair of shoes? And a shower?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah.” He picks up a duffel from the floor and tosses it onto the bed. “Shower’s down the hall on the left. Come downstairs when you’re ready.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">Whoever cleaned me up did a pretty good job, but the water still turns pinkish-red as it streams over my body and down the shower drain. My stomach clenches with anxiety. Sure, we got out of that mess alive. But I ignored Sam and Dean to try to take down their brother and was almost killed in the process, so I’m not feeling too great about my actions.</p><p class="p1">I wrap myself in a towel after my shower and go to rifle through the duffel Dean left on the bed. Most of my stuff was left at my house or in my motel room back in Laramie, so there’s not a lot of options—mostly the old stuff I’d left with Sam and Dean, and what I assume are a random assortment from other hunters. Ratty sports bra. Loose jeans. Men’s t-shirts. A few flannels with holes and stains here and there.</p><p class="p1">I stick with Dean’s t-shirt. He’s more than half a foot taller than me so it’s loose and almost hanging off one of my shoulders, but hey, it’s comfortable.</p><p class="p1">I go down the stairs. It’s a new place for me, but pretty simple—kitchen on the left, where Sam, Dean, and Bobby are all sitting around the table talking. They quiet down immediately the second I walk through the door, all three of them giving me a look like I was the subject of conversation. Sam, in particular, has a tense but unreadable expression as he looks at me.</p><p class="p1">I force a light smile and fight down a blush. I’ve been away for two months and now it looks like I’m going to be working with them full-time again, and nearly getting myself killed is how I reintroduce myself to the team. “Hey. Uh, sorry. About being dumb.”</p><p class="p1">“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Bobby says. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry right now.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay.” I lean against the wall. “So what happened? Adam… <em>healed</em> me or something. And he must’ve let us go. Right?”</p><p class="p1">“Right,” Bobby says.</p><p class="p1">“Why?”</p><p class="p1">“He’s not a bad kid, Eva,” Dean says. “He’s just been through a lot.”</p><p class="p1"><em>A lot</em> being enough to want to kill his own brothers, apparently. “Where is he?”</p><p class="p1">Dean shrugs. “When the demons came back, he used some Michael juice to smite them and then told us he’d be going his own way for a while. No idea where he’s gone off to.”</p><p class="p1">I raise my eyebrows. “‘Michael juice’?”</p><p class="p1">“Michael gave him a bit of grace to work with, apparently. Some healing, smiting, all that angel stuff,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">“Hm.” Useful. I’m glad he’s on our side—or at least, not on their side anymore.</p><p class="p1">“The real good stuff is what Adam told us the demons plan to do after they open the cage. Sam, you want to tell her?”</p><p class="p1">Sam purses his lips but doesn’t speak, so Bobby does. “We found out what the last seal is.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.</p><p class="p1">“A sacrifice of a vessel of Lucifer.”</p><p class="p1">Without thinking, my eyes immediately turn to Sam, and he looks away.</p><p class="p1">“What’s his plan for when he gets out, then?” I ask. “He won’t have a vessel, and he can’t just hang around in incorporeal form.”</p><p class="p1">“The demons found a new vessel for Lucifer, too,” Sam says, his voice soft, unsure.</p><p class="p1">“Oh?” I say. My stomach drops. If vessels run in bloodlines, then…</p><p class="p1">“It’s Sam’s kid,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">Everything clicks together. <em>The mom.</em> That’s what Isabel had called me before she’d killed me. I hesitantly point to myself and Bobby nods.</p><p class="p1">My voice wavers when I ask, “Is she going to be the sacrifice?” If it’s between her and Sam, she’s undoubtedly the more accessible choice.</p><p class="p1">“Nah,” Bobby says. He nods at Sam. “This one is too unruly. They’re looking for a vessel that would be easier to control. More willing.”</p><p class="p1">“Do they know where she is?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Sam says. “They found her about a year ago. Killed her parents, started taking care of her themselves. We don’t know where she is specifically though.”</p><p class="p1">“And they’re what, grooming her to be the devil’s vessel?”</p><p class="p1">Sam shrugs. “Something like that, yeah.”</p><p class="p1">I feel sick to my stomach. “This is on me. I’m so sorry.”</p><p class="p1">“Sorry?” Dean asks,</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know,” I say. “For not checking the paternity. For letting her go. For—I don’t know, having her in the first place?”</p><p class="p1">“None of that’s your fault,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">Yeah, some of that’s true. But it stings a little that I made such a big deal about the paternity not mattering, that the kid wasn’t <em>ours</em>, really, and now it does matter. Bloodlines <em>do</em> matter in this line of work, and I should’ve been more careful.</p><p class="p1">It’s enough my fault that I don’t address Sam’s reassurance and ask the next thought that’s on my mind instead. “So what the hell do we do now?”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve got an idea, actually,” Bobby says. “A tracking spell. We don’t have anything that belongs to her, but we do have both her parents. There’s gotta be something that can make use of that.”</p><p class="p1">“Any ideas on what?” I ask.</p><p class="p1">Bobby shrugs. “Not yet. We can dig into the lore, though, see if we can find something.”</p><p class="p1">“Great. Let’s get to work.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">When I come back from a quick supply for snacks from the too-far-away convenience store (this is why I hate South Dakota), Bobby and Dean are working silently at the kitchen table and Sam’s sitting the couch in the next room over, his notes spread out around him.</p><p class="p1">I drop off Bobby and Dean’s snacks and go to sit next to Sam on the couch, pushing aside a small pile of books so there’s enough room for me to sit. My skin crawls at the proximity, but I do my best to ignore it, to push away the feelings of discomfort, and try to connect like a normal human being.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” he says, lifting his eyes to meet mine. He seems kind of surprised.</p><p class="p1">“Hey.” I keep my voice soft, not wanting Bobby and Dean to eavesdrop. So, this is, definitively, the father of my child. There’s nothing I want to do more than get the hell away from him, but it seems like he and I are in it together now, so I’m going to have to try to get along with him.</p><p class="p1">“Which one of you changed my clothes?” I ask.</p><p class="p1">“Oh.” He laughs awkwardly. “Well. Me. Because of our, uh, history. But I didn’t look,” he adds quickly.</p><p class="p1">I smile. “A gentleman.”</p><p class="p1">He smiles back. “I try to be.”</p><p class="p1">My smile fades as I think about the weight of the situation we’re in. “I’m sorry about before.”</p><p class="p1">“Before?”</p><p class="p1">“Ah, yesterday. Or the day before. When I… I know you were just trying to help.”</p><p class="p1">“No, I get it,” he says, and he smiles, but it seems forced. “Sometimes you just can’t help those reactions.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, but still. And I’m sorry about the, uh…” How do I say it? Our child? My child? “The kid,” I finally settle with.</p><p class="p1">“Seriously, Eva, you don’t need to worry about it. It’s okay.”</p><p class="p1">“But maybe I should’ve let you know at the time. I mean, there were three guys. Three guys I slept with about nine months before. Maybe I should’ve hosted a <em>Mamma Mia</em>–type get-together to figure it out.”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve never seen <em>Mamma Mia</em>.”</p><p class="p1">I frown. “We’ll have to fix that soon. It’s a classic. The point is that there was a one in three chance you were the father and I didn’t tell you.”</p><p class="p1">“What would the point have been?” he says with a shrug. “We were in and out of each other’s lives within a few days. You couldn’t have known it would matter five years down the line. I wouldn’t have known either.”</p><p class="p1">He’s right. The guilt and <em>I-fucked-up</em> feeling that had been bothering me fade a little bit. My stomach is still in knots, though. The demons are trying to start the apocalypse again with <em>my</em> child.</p><p class="p1">“Do you think she’s okay?” I ask.</p><p class="p1">Sam doesn’t answer for a moment, frowning thoughtfully. “I don’t know.”</p><p class="p1">“I just hope they haven’t done too much damage by the time we get her back,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” Dean calls from across the room. “Eva. You and your baby daddy gonna get to work any time soon, or are you just gonna sit there and chat?”</p><p class="p1">I roll my eyes. “We’ll get right on it, boss.”</p><p class="p1">Sam laughs and slides a book over to me. “Here, you can start looking in that.”</p><p class="p1">“Thanks.” I pull the book towards me and flip it open. Great. Latin. This is going to be a long day.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: At Bobby's house, Eva recovers from being wounded by Adam. She's still afraid of Sam, but feels bad about it, because she knows it's not his fault. She finds out that Adam told them the demons' plan: the last seal is a sacrifice of Lucifer's vessel. However, they've found out there are two vessels for Lucifer: Sam, and Sam and Eva's daughter. The demons' plan is to sacrifice Sam and use their daughter as a more compliant vessel. Bobby suggests looking for a spell that will help them find their daughter.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Spellwork</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>At Bobby's house, they work to find a spell so they can find Sam and Eva's daughter; Sam and Eva discuss their daughter's future.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">When it’s time for dinner, I jump at the chance to volunteer to get food. I’ve been reading the same Latin book in a barely readable typeface for hours, and my vision is swimming.</p><p class="p1">Sam offers to go with me.</p><p class="p1">“Eva, you sure you’re okay with that?” Dean asks me.</p><p class="p1">I feel heat rise to my cheeks. One moment of panic while I was bleeding out and now they feel they need to walk on eggshells around me. “Yeah, I’m okay with it. Come on, Sam.”</p><p class="p1">The nearest burger joint is fifteen minutes away. We listen to the music on the way there, not talking, but once we’re on our way back with the food, Sam turns down the music. “What are we going to do if we get her back?” he says.</p><p class="p1">“Keep her safe from the demons, probably. Convince her that she’s <em>not</em> the Devil’s vessel if we have to.”</p><p class="p1">He shakes his head. “No, I mean, she’s a kid.”</p><p class="p1">“And?”</p><p class="p1">He glances over at me. “How do you want to raise her?”</p><p class="p1">“Hm.” This kid had been an abstraction in my mind this whole time. I’d never considered her as an actual person. In need of caretaking. In need of <em>my</em> caretaking. “I guess finding new parents for her again wouldn’t work. Not with her, uh, lineage.” A long stretch of silence. “I don’t know, do you want her?”</p><p class="p1">“What?” he asks, looking at me sharply.</p><p class="p1">“I’m not good with kids. You get along with them fine. You’re the perfect parental candidate.”</p><p class="p1">“First of all, I’m pretty sure that’s not true. Second, if I do take care of her, I don’t have to do it alone.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, you’ll have Dean.”</p><p class="p1">“And where are you going to be?” Sam asks.</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” I say, surprised. I hadn’t actually thought about it. Maybe I’d figured that I’d head back out on my own after all this was over. Because I didn’t want to be around Sam. Because I still don’t really want to be around Sam. But I’m trying to move past that, aren’t I? “I don’t know. I mean, do you <em>want</em> help raising her? I don’t want to be a deadbeat mom.” I throw in a note of humor to mask my uncertainty.</p><p class="p1">We pull up in front of Bobby’s house and I’m relieved this conversation is over for now. But when Sam turns off the car, he sits back in his chair like he has no intention of moving.</p><p class="p1">“What do you want to do?” he asks. “You have a home with us for as long as you want. But it’s up to you.”</p><p class="p1">I blow out a long breath. “I don’t know yet. I just—can we take things one day at a time? Once we get her back, we can figure out what to do next.”</p><p class="p1">“We can’t keep avoiding this conversation forever.”</p><p class="p1">“No, not forever. But for now.” I grab the bag of food and climb out of the car before Sam can say anything else and head inside.</p><p class="p1">“You okay?” Dean asks, checking in as soon as I’m inside. I shoot him a glare but Sam slides past me to come into the room, and I jump, my heart skipping a beat.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry,” Sam mutters.</p><p class="p1">“I’m <em>fine</em>,” I tell Dean. “Did you find anything while we were gone?”</p><p class="p1">“Actually, yes,” he says. He gestures me over, and Sam and I stand behind him to look over his shoulder. He points at a spell written in Latin. “This spell will let us use a few drops of each of your blood on a map, and it’ll show us the way to your kid.”</p><p class="p1">“Great. Let’s do it,” I say.</p><p class="p1">Dean shakes his head. “Food first. Spellwork later.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">Half an hour later, we’re all set up with a map, some basic witchcraft components in a bowl, and of course, the main ingredients—me and Sam.</p><p class="p1">“So what now?” I ask Dean.</p><p class="p1">“Put some drops of blood on the map.”</p><p class="p1">“Anywhere?”</p><p class="p1">He nods. I pull out my pocket knife and make a quick cut on the side of my wrist and let the blood drip onto the map, right over Sioux Falls.</p><p class="p1">“Your turn, Sammy,” Dean says, passing Sam a blade. “Put your blood right where hers is.”</p><p class="p1">With our blood combined, Dean drops a match into the bowl of components. It lights up with a flare. He looks down at the book and starts reading, Latin that I’m not familiar with to understand. As he reads, the combined drops of blood start to snake along the closest road, winding slowly east towards the edge of South Dakota… Along the Nebraska/Iowa border… Missouri/Kansas… A brief, sharp turn west and it stops, halfway between Kansas City and Topeka.</p><p class="p1">“Kansas City?” I ask, confused. Sam and Dean exchange looks. “What?”</p><p class="p1">“Lawrence.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh. Lawrence,” I say. Their hometown. They don’t talk about it much. Nothing but bad memories for them there.</p><p class="p1">“What is that, an eight-hour drive?” Dean asks.</p><p class="p1">“Closer to six for us, I’d reckon,” Bobby says.</p><p class="p1">“Great.” Dean claps his hands together. “Who’s up for a late-night road trip?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Sam and Eva talk about their daughter's future. Eva hasn't thought much about the future but is leaning towards leaving their daughter with Sam, though she pushes the conversation off for another time. After finding a spell, Sam and Eva are able to combine drops of their blood to find their daughter, who is in Lawrence, Kansas.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. The Rescue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The team rescues Sam and Eva's daughter from demons.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">We roll into Lawrence around four in the morning. It’s too early to actually do anything, so we grab a couple of motel rooms so we can get a couple extra hours of sleep.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll see you in the morning. The actual morning,” I say as I let myself into my motel room.</p><p class="p1">“Wait, hold on,” Dean says. “I don’t think we did the math on this. If you have one room, then the three of us…” He gestures at himself, Bobby, and Sam.</p><p class="p1">“Share a bed,” I suggest.</p><p class="p1">Dean laughs. “Not happening.”</p><p class="p1">I shrug. “You’ll figure something out.” I step into the room and close the door behind me. “Eva—” Dean starts to say as the door is closing, and then the door’s closed.</p><p class="p1">I flop down on the bed fully clothed. I should go clean up after the long drive, or maybe prepare myself for the coming day of rescuing the child I gave up five years ago.</p><p class="p1">Instead, I fall asleep to the sound of Sam and Dean bickering right outside my door.</p><hr/><p class="p1">I wake up to someone pounding on my door. “Eva!”</p><p class="p1">I grunt and roll out of bed. Sounds like Dean. I comb some of the tangles out of my hair with my fingers and then go to answer the door. “Good morning,” I say, yawning and rubbing some of the sleep from my eyes.</p><p class="p1">“Didn’t you set your alarm?”</p><p class="p1">I glance back at my phone, laying on the bed. I didn’t even have the energy to plug it in to charge last night. “Guess not.”</p><p class="p1">“Well, it’s 7:20. Chop chop.”</p><p class="p1">Twenty minutes past our agreed wake-up time. Not bad, considering how late we got in.</p><p class="p1">“Okay. Let me put on some fresh clothes and I’ll head over.”</p><p class="p1">I pick up my phone before I get changed. Ten text messages and three missed calls. Huh. I guess I was pretty resistant to waking up.</p><p class="p1">“How’d you sleep?” I ask the three of them when I let myself into their room a couple of minutes later.</p><p class="p1">“I slept on the floor, so, not well,” Dean says with a glare.</p><p class="p1">“It’s not gay to share a bed every once in a while,” I say. Dean opens his mouth to reply, but I continue, “What’s the plan?”</p><p class="p1">“Dean had this idea,” Sam says. “We know this psychic in town. Missouri Moseley. We worked with her a few years ago. She might be able to help us.”</p><p class="p1">“Great. Let’s go see her.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">It’s a cute little house with mystic-y vibes. Sam knocks on the door as the four of us wait outside. The door opens to a stout woman with curly hair and a big smile. “Sam! Dean!” She pulls them both into a hug. When she steps back, she looks at Bobby. “Bobby. It’s been a long time,” she says, her voice chilly. Bobby lets out a huff of an exasperated laugh. And then she turns to me, the smile back on her face. “And Eva.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah, that’s… How…?”</p><p class="p1">She taps the side of her head. “Psychic. But you knew that already.”</p><p class="p1">I frown, feeling uncomfortable. I don’t like the idea of someone in my head. I mean, what if I’m thinking about something weird, like porn? Missouri bites her lip like she’s holding back a laugh. I panic, heat rising to my cheeks.<em> Think of something else! Anything else! </em>Telling myself that doesn’t help. Now I’m just thinking about it more.</p><p class="p1">Now she does laugh, and Sam, Dean, and Bobby look at her quizzically. “Don’t worry about it,” she tells me, and she lets us all into the house.</p><p class="p1">I’ve managed to get my thoughts back on track by the time we’re sitting in the living room sipping tea.</p><p class="p1">“So you’re looking for your daughter,” she says, looking between me and Sam.</p><p class="p1">Sam clears his throat. “Yeah. There’s a faction of demons planning to free Lucifer and use her as Lucifer’s vessel.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s probably going to be dangerous, so if you don’t want to help, we’d understand,” Dean says.</p><p class="p1">She laughs. “When has a little danger ever stopped me?” She stands up. “Let me get some materials, and we can start to look for her.”</p><p class="p1">Missouri is psychic, but she’s got some spellcraft up her sleeve too. She’s not able to find the exact location of the kid—wherever she’s being held is undoubtedly warded—but she can get us close.</p><p class="p1">Close enough turns out to be exactly what we need: we get a one-mile diameter area where she could be, and all that exists in the area is a farm and a single house. Bingo.</p><p class="p1">“Me and Bobby will lure them out, Eva and Sam can go in and get her,” Dean suggests as the four of us drive towards the house. He shoots a glance towards me in the backseat. “I mean… If that’s okay.”</p><p class="p1">I can’t see Sam from my perspective in the seat directly behind him, but his shoulders are tense as he waits for my response. Well, he <em>is</em> her dad. “Yeah, I’m on board,” I say.</p><p class="p1">Dean and Bobby drop us off a little ways away so we can sneak the rest of the way on foot while they drive ahead to the house to attract some attention. From our nearby hiding spot in the bushes, we see Dean rev his engine outside the house. A few demons immediately pour out onto the front porch. The Impala accelerates in reverse and then spins around, starting to speed off. The demons clamber into the black SUVs parked in front of the house and follow.</p><p class="p1">“I didn’t expect it to be that easy,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“We still don’t know what’s inside,” Sam says, immediately dampening my tentative optimism. “Come on.”</p><p class="p1">We approach the house, keeping ourselves as hidden as possible behind bushes, trees, old farm equipment. We reach the back door. I pull out my lock picks and bend down to get to work. My skin crawls. Danger. I glance back. Sam’s standing right behind me. False alarm. Maybe having him come with wasn’t a good idea.</p><p class="p1">I straighten up. “Maybe you should.”</p><p class="p1">“Uh, sure.” He takes my picks from me and unlocks the door.</p><p class="p1">He steps inside and I follow. We walk as quietly as we can, but the old floorboards still creak slightly under our steps. It’s dark in here; the only light coming from the gaps in the curtains where we can see dust molecules floating idly.</p><p class="p1">There’s a loud creak from around the corner and a dark shape swings around the corner, the metal of a blade flashing. Sam ducks under it and in one swift motion, stabs the demon with his demon knife—there’s a yellow flickering, outlining the skeleton underneath, and the body drops to the floor with a light thud. A surprisingly quiet death.</p><p class="p1">We stand still for a moment on high alert, listening intently for anyone else on the floor. There’s no one. There’s an open door leading to steps to a basement on the left, and a flight of stairs to upstairs to the right. Sam points to the stairs and I nod. We’re not splitting up on this one.</p><p class="p1">The stairs creak too, Sam going up first and me following. Sam peeks into the room on the left first, knife in one hand, gun in the other. He looks at me and shakes his head. Nothing. There are three more rooms down the hall. I let him take the lead I keep my salt-round shotgun up in front of me. Not as effective as an angel blade, but it’ll slow them down at least.</p><p class="p1">The second door is shut. Sam slowly turns the knob and pushes the door open. A bathroom. No one inside. The next door is shut too. He pushes it open. I can’t see what this room is from the angle. He steps inside, and I hear a startled yell come from him.</p><p class="p1">“Sam!” I say, quickly stepping into the room—a bedroom, I note quickly, briefly taking in the details of a pink dresser, bed, desk. There’s a brawny, black-eyed demon behind Sam, holding him with a thick arm wrapped around Sam’s neck. Another large demon is standing to the left looking ready to fight; a third, a young woman, is standing protectively near a young girl—black-haired and defiant.</p><p class="p1">My breath catches. That’s her.</p><p class="p1">I quickly shift my attention back to Sam. I need to help him—or not, as I find as he elbows the guy in the face and twists into a position that lets him stab the guy in the gut. The second demon is coming after me. I hold up the salt shotgun but hesitate. The blasts from these are loud, and there’s a five-year-old here.</p><p class="p1">Instead, I dodge out of the way at the last second. The demon spins around, surprisingly agile for his size, and his hand whips out and curls around my neck.</p><p class="p1">I choke, desperately but futilely trying to draw air into my lungs. Suddenly, the grip loosens and air floods back into my lungs as a blade pierces through the man’s neck. Yellow lightning flicker, and he’s down.</p><p class="p1">“Thanks,” I wheeze to Sam.</p><p class="p1">“One more,” he says, eyes focused on the last demon in front of us. The young woman. She begins to mutter a spell and an intense pain clutches at my heart and spreads.</p><p class="p1">Sam gasps in pain too, but he recovers just long enough to throw the demon knife at her. It spins through the air and embeds itself in her forehead. She falls, and the pain in my body immediately fades.</p><p class="p1">Sam and I stand there, breathing heavy and looking at the girl in front of us. Our daughter.</p><p class="p1">I wish we hadn’t had to kill the demons in front of her, but she looks surprisingly unfazed, even with a splash of blood across her pink lacy dress.</p><p class="p1">I kneel down a few feet away from her. “Hey, sweetie. We’re here to take you somewhere safe.”</p><p class="p1">She’s trembling, and there’s fear in her eyes, but anger too. I reach a hand out to her and—</p><p class="p1">“Get away from me!” She shoves a hand out towards me and I go flying across the room. I slam against the wall before falling and crumpling to the ground.</p><p class="p1">“Eva!” Sam says, startled. I crawl to my hands and knees, confused. We’re not the enemies here. We’re the ones saving her from demons. She gets that, right?</p><p class="p1">She throws a hand out against Sam as well, but there’s no effect. She frowns and tries again.</p><p class="p1">“We’re not here to hurt you,” Sam says, approaching her slowly. I catch my breath from the floor. Whatever powers she has apparently don’t work on him the way they worked on me, so I should probably sit this one out.</p><p class="p1">He crouches down too, so he’s about eye-level with her. Her fists clench by her sides and she lifts her chin up defiantly. “Hey. It’s okay. I’m… I’m your dad.” He gestures towards me. “That’s your mom. We just want to help.”</p><p class="p1">She shakes her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “I don’t know you.” The anger that had been there a moment ago is replaced with confusion and grief. That’s right. Her parents had been killed just a year ago. The same age Dean had been when he’d lost his mom. She wouldn’t have recovered from that yet.</p><p class="p1">I hear the sound of a car. I stand up, wincing at the pain along my side, and brush the curtain aside from the window. Two cars are speeding down the dirt road back towards us. We have less than a minute before they’re here.</p><p class="p1">“Sam, they’re back. We need to get out of there. Now.”</p><p class="p1">He holds out a hand to the girl. “Come on, we have to go.”</p><p class="p1">She shakes her head again.</p><p class="p1">“Dammit,” he mumbles. He steps towards her and scoops her up, propping her on a hip as he turns to leave. She flails, kicking and punching and whining, but he leans away and ignores it. “Sorry,” he tells her. We race down the stairs and out the front door. There’s one car left, a black sedan.</p><p class="p1">“Shit,” I mutter. Keys. I run back into the house, looking around. I don’t see any. I dig through the pockets of the dead demon on the floor. Jackpot.</p><p class="p1">I grab the keys and run back outside. “Let’s go,” I say, unlocking the front door and jumping in. Sam clambers into the back seat with the kid. He pulls the seat shut behind him just as I turn on the car and slam down on the gas pedal. I glance in the rearview mirror. Sam’s put the kid on the opposite seat and is buckling her in. She looks grimly resigned, but is still silent.</p><p class="p1">The cars are coming from the east, so I turn the car around quickly and head west on the bumpy road. I hope to god that it gets us somewhere, instead of into more farmland.</p><p class="p1">The car ride’s bumpy—<em>very</em> bumpy—as I keep us going fast along the dirt road. I look in the rearview mirror repeatedly as the farmhouse shrinks out of view. The clouds of dust are staying at a consistent distance though, even getting a little closer…</p><p class="p1">There! An actual road, a few hundred feet away. A little traffic, but not much. I slow down when we reach it but don’t stop, slamming on the gas pedal again as soon as we’re around the corner. “Call Dean,” I tell Sam, and he immediately gets out his phone.</p><p class="p1">“Hey. Yeah, we got her. We’re on the road. Uh, just got onto 59, headed north. At Missouri’s? Okay, we’ll meet you there. Yeah, of course we’ll make sure we’re not followed. Okay. Bye.”</p><p class="p1">He makes eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. “We’re going back to Missouri’s. I’ll give you directions.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: When Sam, Dean, Eva, and Bobby arrive in Lawrence, they seek help from an old psychic acquaintance: Missouri Mosely. She helps them find the exact location of their daughter in a house with nothing else around. Dean and Bobby lure away the demons and Sam and Eva go in to save their daughter. They kill the demons defending her, and Eva is surprised when the scared five-year-old girl telekinetically throws her across the room; however, the girl's telekinetic powers don't seem to work on Sam, who picks her up despite her complaints and flees the house with her and Eva.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. North</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam, Dean, Eva, and Bobby return to Bobby's house with Sam and Eva's daughter Faith.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I am absolutely doing my best to keep it together but if you notice any inconsistencies, please let me know.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">It takes a long time to calm down the girl—Faith, Missouri tells us as soon as she finds out the girl’s name. There’s quite a bit of hysterics on Faith’s part—wailing, punching, and a lot of <em>I don’t know you’</em>s and <em>I want to go home</em>’s.</p><p class="p1">Missouri had done a lot—with her psychic powers, she was able to understand Faith’s areas of concern and make her understand that we’re here to help, and gradually, Faith had settled down to a steady soft whimpering as she started to accept her change in situation.</p><p class="p1">Faith is sitting on the bed in one of Missouri’s spare bedrooms, staring out the window, when Dean gets back from the store after a few minutes with a couple bags of supplies and toys she might like—Legos and dolls and drawing stuff.</p><p class="p1">“Thanks for going out and getting that,” I say, as I lean against the doorway and look into the room at her. I haven’t said anything to her since we brought her back. I mean, what am I supposed to say? I don’t know how to talk to kids. I don’t know how to talk to <em>this</em> kid.</p><p class="p1">“No problem,” he says, and he slips past me. She looks up at him as he starts taking stuff out of the bag and talks to her in a soft voice that I can’t quite overhear. She says something back, still inaudible to me. He sits down on the floor and starts opening up some boxes of Legos, and then she climbs down from the bed to help. He keeps chatting softly with her, even though she doesn’t reply much.</p><p class="p1">I smile a little bit. I didn’t know he was so good with kids. Me on the other hand… This is my flesh-and-blood child and I’m really starting to wonder if I’m supposed to be feeling something more. At least a little bit of a connection. But she feels like just some kid to me. A stranger.</p><p class="p1">“Eva?” Sam says from the top of the stairs. I glance over at him. “Missouri wants to talk to us.”</p><p class="p1">I follow him down to the stairs and into the living room, where Missouri and Bobby are sitting in icy silence. I have no idea what transpired between them to make their relationship like this. Somehow Bobby manages to get on the bad side of nearly everyone he knows.</p><p class="p1">Bobby clears his throat as soon as we walk into the room, as much to break the tension between him and Missouri as to draw attention to himself. “How is she?”</p><p class="p1">“Dean’s with her,” I say, sitting down in an armchair. “She seems to be more calmed down now. I think they’re playing with Legos.”</p><p class="p1">“Good,” Missouri says. “But there’s a lot of bad news, too.”</p><p class="p1">Sam sits down next to Bobby on the couch. “What kind of bad news?”</p><p class="p1">“She’s been through a lot in the past year,” Missouri says, and she sounds hesitant, like she’s holding something back.</p><p class="p1">“I mean, yeah. Her parents were killed and she was kidnapped by demons. I’d count that as a lot,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“Yes, and… You saw her display of telekinesis back when you were saving her?”</p><p class="p1">I nod, but Sam and Bobby are both completely still. They seem to know what’s coming, or at least have a better idea of it than I do.</p><p class="p1">Missouri sighs. “The demons have been giving her doses of demon blood for months.”</p><p class="p1"><em>“What</em>?” I say. I look at Sam. He was always sketchy on the details of his time addicted to demon blood, but I at least know it’s something he went through. Something that made him powerful, that made him <em>feel</em> powerful, but that made him completely powerless as soon as the withdrawal overtook him. “What does that mean?” I ask, directed more at Sam than Missouri.</p><p class="p1">“It means she has powers,” Sam says. “We can’t be sure yet what they are. Telekinesis, visions, mind control... We’ll find out more as she shows us more of what she can do. But it also means she’s going down a dark path that we have to stop as soon as we can.” He’s right. Since she’s just a kid, it’s hard to know what the long-term effects will look like exactly. But there’s no doubt that with enough time under the demonic influence of the blood, it won’t be hard to get her to say yes to Lucifer.</p><p class="p1">“Okay, but how?” I ask. Going cold turkey off demon blood had almost killed Sam. How are we supposed to do that to a five-year-old?</p><p class="p1">Sam takes a deep breath. If anyone knows how it would feel for her to stop drinking demon blood, he would. “We can try to taper her off it. It would still suck, but…” He shrugs. “At least there wouldn’t be as heavy of a shock as stopping altogether.”</p><p class="p1">“I guess we’ll have to, right?” I say. “There’s not really much of a choice.”</p><p class="p1">“Not really,” Sam says, and he looks tired. Tired, and sad, and I have no doubt this is bringing up a lot of bad memories for him from the not-so-distant past.</p><p class="p1">“So what else happened to her in the past year?” I ask, turning back to Missouri again.</p><p class="p1">“Well, she’s spent a lot of time doing kid things,” Missouri says.</p><p class="p1">“Kid things?”</p><p class="p1">“Learning to read, drawing, counting, preschool stuff. But they’ve been training her how to use her powers and how to fight, too,” she says. “They tried to engrain the idea that Lucifer is a hero, and Faith is too young to know any different. And they’ve been telling her about her role for the past year so she has no doubt that she’s something special.”</p><p class="p1">Something special. Yeah, she is.</p><p class="p1">“We should get her somewhere safe in the meantime,” Bobby says. “Go back to my house, until we can figure out what the demons are going to do next.”</p><p class="p1">“Your house is going to be safe enough?” I ask skeptically.</p><p class="p1">“It’s one of the most heavily-warded spots in the contiguous United States, so you tell me,” he says, unnecessarily sarcastic.</p><p class="p1">I roll my eyes. Point taken. It really is a tragedy that it’s in one of the Dakotas. Forty-eight possibilities and that’s where he picked.</p><p class="p1">“Do you need anything else from me?” Missouri asks. “I can come with you if you need.”</p><p class="p1">“No, we’ll be okay,” I say, and Sam and Bobby nod.</p><p class="p1">“Thanks for all your help, Missouri,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“Any time,” she says. She stands up. “You’re free to stay the night and get on the road in the morning, if you like.”</p><p class="p1">It’s getting late, and Faith has already been through enough today. We all need the rest.</p><hr/><p class="p1">The car ride back is uncomfortable.</p><p class="p1">By the time we take off in the early afternoon (Missouri kept remembering small things to give us or do before we left), Sam’s driving, Bobby’s up front, and Faith is in the middle back seat between me and Dean. It had taken a while to figure out who would sit where, but Faith refused to leave Dean’s side, and at my height I fit more comfortably into the back than Bobby or Sam. So this is how we ended up arranged.</p><p class="p1">An eight-hour trip with Sam, Dean, and Bobby would’ve sucked, but throwing an extra five-year-old into the mix?</p><p class="p1">“So, what are you interested in?” I ask Faith as we pull out onto the highway. Dean raises his eyebrows at me but I ignore him. I <em>know</em> I’m not good with kids but at least I’m trying.</p><p class="p1">She sniffles and wipes away tears. I don’t think she’s stopped crying once since we got up this morning. It’s still been a tough time for her.</p><p class="p1">“I like cats,” she says.</p><p class="p1">“Oh!” I say. I scramble for something to say but I haven’t had a cat since I was eight, so I end up settling with, “Dean is allergic to cats.”</p><p class="p1">She looks up at Dean. “What does that mean?”</p><p class="p1">Dean glares at me. “What she’s <em>trying</em> to say is that I like cats too.” He rifles through the backpack by his feet and pulls out a pen and a journal—<em>my</em> journal, I note with irritation after a moment—and passes them to her, the journal flipped open to a random empty page. “Here, Faith,” he says. “How about you draw a picture of a cat for your mom, okay?”</p><p class="p1">“She’s not my mom!” Faith says, but she takes the journal anyway and starts to scribble furiously on the paper, her eyebrows drawn in focus. She wipes her runny nose with the back of the sleeve and leaves an awkward silence in the car.</p><p class="p1">She says I’m not her mom, but Missouri told us she knows I am, at least on one level. The demons had made her heritage clear to her when she’d been with them—that the parents she grew up with weren’t her “real” parents, that they had merely taken her in when she was a baby; that her true father was someone far more powerful and significant.</p><p class="p1">She draws for a few minutes and then holds it out for us to see.</p><p class="p1">“It looks great!” I say with forced enthusiasm. I can barely tell what it is. Some indistinct scribbles and lines in a form that looks vaguely like a cat…?</p><p class="p1">“Why don’t you give it a friend?” Dean asks, and she nods and starts drawing again. I don’t know how he does it. Interacting so naturally with her.</p><p class="p1">The rest of the time is tortuous. Trying to stay upbeat when I really just want to scream about this whole situation. A week ago I was totally free. Doing my own thing. Being my own person. Now? I’m tied down with the responsibility of a five-year-old’s well-being and all that entails, including stopping the Apocalypse and reconciling with the man whose memory is etched into my brain as my eternal torturer in hell.</p><p class="p1">She falls asleep not long after dinner, dozing off with her head against Dean’s arm. I think she wore herself out by crying all day. My journal has ugly drawings all over its pages, random pen marks on its covers and page edges, and a little bit of kid snot smeared on a few spots. I guess I’m finding a new journal. It’s too bad. I had a lot of good lore and research in that one, too.</p><p class="p1">When she’s asleep, I take the opportunity to nap a little too. It’s been a very long few days, so I rest my head against the window and drift in and out to the sounds of Sam, Dean, and Bobby talking.</p><p class="p1">I’m awake briefly to scowl as we pass the <em>WELCOME TO SOUTH DAKOTA</em> sign, and then fully awake when we get to Bobby’s place just after dark. After we’re parked and unpacking, Dean pulls the still-sleeping Faith gently out of the car and passes her to Sam.</p><p class="p1">“We can take care of the gear,” Bobby tells me, and he nods towards Sam. “Go on.”</p><p class="p1">I don’t really want to, but I guess it’s sort of expected, since we’re the parents. So I go, leading the way and opening doors as we go so that Sam can carry Faith through the door and upstairs into the spare bedroom. He sets her in bed and pulls up a blanket to cover her, and she stirs only slightly.</p><p class="p1">Sam steps back to stand next to me, and we watch her silently for a moment. The stress of it all fades for a moment—right now she’s not a responsibility weighing me down. And there it is: the spark of connection I’d been missing since we’d first found her. This is <em>our child</em>. We made that. It’s kind of a miracle, I guess. How two fucked-up individuals could make something so amazing, something so pure.</p><p class="p1">Sam’s hand grazes the back of mine and I jump, my heart suddenly beating hard and fast in my chest. The sense of connection and contentedness cracks.</p><p class="p1">Sam sighs and turns away, leaving the room and going back downstairs.</p><p class="p1">I feel an ache of loss when he goes. Getting caught up in what our kid meant… Maybe I thought it would change something. Her, present, in our lives. Somehow it would cure my fear of Sam. Somehow it would make him fall for me. Somehow we’d become a perfect little nuclear family.</p><p class="p1">I come downstairs to see Bobby and Sam setting up bedding and a cot in the library while Dean puts away some groceries.</p><p class="p1">There’s a knock at the door and we all freeze. The list of people we’d expect to knock on our door at this hour is on the low end between zero and one, so there’s no telling who it could be.</p><p class="p1">Bobby goes to answer the door, and the rest of us pull out our guns and edge into positions where we can see the front door.</p><p class="p1">Bobby opens the door and makes a slight noise of surprise. “Adam?”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva, Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Faith drive north back to Bobby's house. Faith is still upset about her situation, but seems to be getting attached to Dean. Eva struggles to connect with her daughter at all - she feels like Faith is more of an unwanted responsibility than a child she's really able to care for. When they arrive at Bobby's house, Eva feels a moment of connection with Faith and Sam, but it's broken by the anxiety caused by Sam's presence. As they set up to go to bed, Adam arrives at the house.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Relief</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Adam comes back to help.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">“You’re finally back,” Adam says, stepping past Bobby at the door to let himself in. The rest of us lower our guns. “You got her?” he asks as he sets his backpack and a gallon milk container of a dark liquid on the floor.</p><p class="p1">“Is that…?” I start to say.</p><p class="p1">“Demon blood,” he says. “I thought you might need some for her soon.”</p><p class="p1">Sam’s eyes flick down to it and he licks his lips.</p><p class="p1">“Uh, thanks,” Dean says, and he picks up the blood and moves it to another room out of Sam’s sight. He comes back. “What are you doing here? I thought you were doing some soul-searching or something.”</p><p class="p1">“I was,” Adam says. “I decided I’ll help you.”</p><p class="p1">“Help us,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“To stop this,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “Apocalypse two-point-oh.”</p><p class="p1">“Why?” I ask. My last memory of him was telling Sam and Dean he wanted revenge, and then me getting shot. I’m not totally sure I trust him.</p><p class="p1">“Don’t get me wrong. I’ve still got some problems with you,” Adam says, looking between Sam, Dean, and Bobby. “But I don’t want to watch my world go up in flames.”</p><p class="p1">“Why go with it in the first place, then?” I ask, crossing my arms.</p><p class="p1">“Because I told Michael I’d get him out,” Adam says. “And working from outside the cage with the demons to spring him <em>and</em> Lucifer seemed like the best option.”</p><p class="p1">“Wait, how did <em>you</em> get out?” Sam interjects.</p><p class="p1">“My physical form is smaller than an angel’s, so the cage just needed to be cracked open a little bit for me to leave,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” I say, and it clicks. “That’s what the ritual was for.” I look at Sam and Dean. “The night I died. The demon said the cage-opening ritual had been a success, right? But the archangels hadn’t escaped.” I turn back to Adam. “That was for you, wasn’t it? Is that when you came back? Five or six months ago?”</p><p class="p1">Adam nods.</p><p class="p1">Dean’s face flashes to fury. “Do you know how many people died for that ritual?”</p><p class="p1">“No, I don’t,” Adam says, and he’s sounding angry too. “I wasn’t given the details on how my escape would work and I wasn’t too keen on prying for specifics on my one chance of escape from an eternity in hell. When you know no one else is coming for you, that’s the type of opportunity you can’t pass up.”</p><p class="p1">Dean bites back a retort. Adam knows he’s still got the guilt card against them for leaving him in Hell for so many years, and I, at least, can’t fault him for that.</p><p class="p1">“So are you going back on your promise to Michael?” I ask, still a little suspicious.</p><p class="p1">“No,” he says. “I’ll find a way to get him out. Just without freeing Lucifer, too.”</p><p class="p1">“You know he’s one of the bad guys, right?” Dean asks.</p><p class="p1">Adam scowls at him. “You don’t know him.”</p><p class="p1">Dean raises his eyebrows. “I know enough. Like, that he lead an effort to end the world.”</p><p class="p1">“I owe him, okay?” Adam says, angry, but it fades quick into a plain vulnerability. “He was all I had in the cage. He protected me.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah. Yeah, I get it,” Sam says, and I’m sure he’s thinking of Castiel—the angel who had once participated in Lucifer’s release but later redeemed himself with the Winchesters.</p><p class="p1">“So are you going to let me help or not?” Adam asks.</p><p class="p1">Sam nods. “Yeah, of course. Glad to have you on the team, Adam.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">When I go out to get some fresh air about an hour later, I find Adam sitting out on the porch step drinking a beer.</p><p class="p1">I sit down next to him. “Hey.”</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” he says.</p><p class="p1">Now that he’s not acting tough in front of the Winchesters, it’s really obvious how young he is. Probably around twenty, if that. He’s been through way too much for someone his age.</p><p class="p1">“Thanks for saving my life,” I say.</p><p class="p1">He stares down at his beer bottle. “Guess I kind of had to.”</p><p class="p1">“I appreciate it anyway.”</p><p class="p1">There’s a moment of silence as I struggle to think of something to say next, but Adam breaks the silence first. “You’re with Sam, aren’t you?”</p><p class="p1">“What? No, I mean… Faith is ours, but that was a long time ago, and…” I sigh.</p><p class="p1">“You wish you were,” Adam says, not quite a question. I don’t say anything. I <em>used to </em>wish I was with him. Maybe I still do, somewhere in me. But I don’t think—even if Sam wanted me—that it could ever work out, with how damaged my psyche is. “You know,” Adam says, “If he had to choose between you and Dean, he’d pick Dean.”</p><p class="p1">I scowl. I mean, yeah. Sam and Dean are Sam and Dean. Peanut butter and jelly. Cookies and milk. No one without the other. “Just because his brother is important to him doesn’t mean he’s incapable of loving anyone else,” I say. “He’s got people who matter to him.”</p><p class="p1">“Do you really think you’d be okay being number two for the person you’re with?” Adam says.</p><p class="p1">I let out a huff. “It wouldn’t be like that.”</p><p class="p1">“What would it be like?”</p><p class="p1">“More complicated,” I say, but I can’t specify how. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because we’re not together, and we never will be. You probably noticed the last time we met, but he’s pretty closely associated with some really bad memories for me.”</p><p class="p1">Adam watches me thoughtfully for a moment until I start to get uncomfortable and stand up.</p><p class="p1">“I should—” I start to say, but he says, “Wait,” and pulls me back down to sit next to him.</p><p class="p1">“What…?” I start.</p><p class="p1">“Can I try something?” he asks, reaching a hand up toward my forehead. “This gift Michael gave me, I think maybe I can help.”</p><p class="p1">“Help with what?”</p><p class="p1">“The memories.”</p><p class="p1">“Why would you do that?”</p><p class="p1">Adam drops his hand. “Because I can tell you really care about him. And… Dean was right. I caused a lot of bad getting back, and being back. I need to do something good.”</p><p class="p1">His eyes are pleading. Despite the fact that he used me as bait to get revenge on his brothers, it’s clear that yeah, he is a good kid. So I want to say yes, but— “What if it makes it worse?”</p><p class="p1">He shrugs. “I doubt it would but… Wouldn’t it be worth the risk?”</p><p class="p1">I hesitate. These past months have been tough—anxious and tense and not getting much joy out of anything. Since I’ve been back with the Winchesters, I’ve felt unsafe around Sam too, which isn’t great considering that he is now effectively my co-parent.</p><p class="p1">“Fine,” I say, and I close my eyes.</p><p class="p1">I feel two of his fingertips press against the center of my forehead and a warm sensation rushes through me, the back of my eyelids flashing white, and then… I feel lighter. Like a weight’s been lifted. I open my eyes.</p><p class="p1">Adam’s wiping away a nosebleed again, I note distantly, but everything feels just a little different. A little better. I don’t feel as on edge or hopeless. There’s optimism, and there’s relief. As I take time noticing the changes in mood—yeah, there’s a <em>lot</em> of relief.</p><p class="p1">“What did you do?” I ask in awe.</p><p class="p1">“I severed most of the connections between your Hell memories and your emotions,” he says, his voice a little thin. “Remembering Hell isn’t going to trigger a fear response anymore.”</p><p class="p1">I start to stand up—I need to see Sam, and the image of him in my head doesn’t fill me with dread and that’s such a relief—but then I sit back down. “Are you okay?” I ask, gesturing at his face, where his nose is still bleeding.</p><p class="p1">He wipes away the blood again and forces a smile. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he says. He takes a sip of beer. “It happens sometimes. Don’t worry about me.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” I say, and I feel kind of bad about it but I move past worrying about him in half a second. “Thanks,” I tell him, and then stand up. “Thanks so much.”</p><p class="p1">I slip back inside. Dean is sprawled out on the couch, snoring softly. I smile. Usually it’d be kind of irritating, but I’m in such a good mood now that it seems kind of cute.</p><p class="p1">I make my way to the kitchen. Sam’s there at the kitchen table, a glass of whiskey and a book out in front of him.</p><p class="p1">My heart beats fast, but it’s not fear this time. The memories of Hell are still there—I can picture <em>that</em> Sam, but it’s distant, like someone else’s memories, or a dream. When I look at <em>this</em> Sam, all I see is him. There’s no sense of danger, no feeling of threat.</p><p class="p1">Sam notices me standing there, staring at him, and looks up at me. “Hey, Eva,” he says. “What’s up?”</p><p class="p1">“Sam, I…” I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t know how to express my relief. I want him to know how I feel, how I’ve felt; the love that I so keenly lacked during the months since my return from Hell. But though the fear of rejection isn’t anything compared to the fear I’ve felt the past couple of months, I still can’t get the words out.</p><p class="p1">He stands up and walks over to me slowly, gauging my reaction as he approaches. Thoughtful, as always, to make sure I’m comfortable. “Are you okay?” he asks.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” I say, with a short laugh. “Yeah, I’m really, really okay.” He’s right here in front of me and I don’t want to back away. I want to close the distance between us, not increase it.</p><p class="p1">I take a step towards him and rest a hand on his chest. His breath catches. He’s warm beneath my touch, even through his t-shirt, and I can feel his heart beating against my palm.</p><p class="p1">“Did something happen?” he asks softly.</p><p class="p1">I look up and meet his eyes. They’re confused, mostly. A little concerned. “Adam fixed it. He used his powers, and I’m not afraid anymore.”</p><p class="p1">“What? How…?”</p><p class="p1">I shake my head. “I don’t know. But the memories, they’re distant, and I feel so much better.” I laugh again, giddy and relieved. “I feel so much better.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh my god.” He smiles and laughs a little too. “I’m so glad to hear that, Eva.”</p><p class="p1">I realize my hand is still on his chest so I start to withdraw it, but he catches my wrist.</p><p class="p1">He’s so close now. My eyes are still on his face—serious again now—and my lips part unconsciously. I want him to kiss me. I want him to kiss me so badly, and I know it’s a long shot but right now he still has my wrist gently in his grasp so it doesn’t feel so unlikely and maybe I was wrong and—</p><p class="p1">And then his lips are on mine. Warmth rushes through me and I can only think, <em>Finally</em>. For the first time in a long, long time—years, maybe even a decade—things feel all right. The end of the world might be coming but even that’s okay because at least I’m whole and at least I’m with him and at least I’m happy. <em>Finally.</em></p><p class="p1">His hand is resting softly on the side of my neck when he pulls back, and he looks almost dazed.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t get it,” I say, barely more than a whisper.</p><p class="p1">“Get what?”</p><p class="p1">“I thought you didn’t want me.”</p><p class="p1">His brow furrows with confusion. “What?”</p><p class="p1">“Last time I tried to show I was interested. You said it wasn’t a good idea.”</p><p class="p1">He raises his eyebrows. “I said that because you were drunk, Eva.”</p><p class="p1">“What?” I feel my cheeks start to flush.</p><p class="p1">“I did want you. I really wanted you. But I wasn’t going to take advantage of you like that.”</p><p class="p1">I open my mouth and then close it again, not sure what to say. “But what about after? You never tried to make something happen again?”</p><p class="p1">He shrugs and looks away. “You never made another move. I thought you’d only suggested because you were drunk, not because you actually wanted something real.”</p><p class="p1">I let out a short, incredulous laugh. “Seriously? You’re telling me you wanted me and I wanted you this entire time?”</p><p class="p1">He laughs a little too. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s what happened.”</p><p class="p1">“God. I feel like such a dumbass.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re telling me.” He tilts my chin up and leans down to kiss me again. I feel his lips curve into a smile against mine before he pulls back. “At least we know now.”</p><p class="p1">Yeah, at least we know now.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Adam shows up at Bobby's house with demon blood for Faith and an offer to help them. He feels like he owes Michael, so he still plans to find a way to free Michael after they prevent the second Apocalypse, but he wants to do it in a way that won't mean the end of the world. Eva is suspicious but they all accept his help. Later, Eva speaks with Adam alone about Sam. He tells her that Sam will always choose Dean over her if push comes to shove, but she dismisses what he says as being too simplistic. Still, Adam offers to use the powers that he got from Michael to alleviate the trauma from her Hell memories; though it seems to take something out of him to use the powers on Eva, her anxiety and trauma are immediately improved and she no longer is afraid of Sam. She goes to see Sam and tells him that her Hell memories were essentially cured, and Sam kisses her. They both find out that they've both wanted each other the whole time they've been working together, but thought the other wasn't interested due to a misunderstanding.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Not Such a Bad Mom</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva comforts Faith.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">I kiss Sam goodnight and go to keep an eye on Faith because, at this point in time, she’s unstable, to say the least, so I probably need to make sure she’s doing okay. It’s tough, because there’s so much to catch up on with Sam. A lot to talk about, sure, but some other things as well. And in a house filled with family, there’s not really a lot we can get up to.</p><p class="p1">I’m dozing off in the chair in the corner of the guest room when Faith shakes me awake. I blink my eyes open and meet her eyes in the dark. She looks scared.</p><p class="p1">“Where am I?” she asks, sounding panicked.</p><p class="p1">“We’re at Bobby’s house. It’s safe here, I promise. You fell asleep in the car so we brought you in.”</p><p class="p1">She doesn’t look particularly placated. “I had a nightmare.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” I say. I probably should’ve thought this through before I volunteered to watch her for the night, but I’ve got no idea what to do. “What about?”</p><p class="p1">Tears well up in her eyes. “My mom and dad.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” I say again. “Uh…” I try to think of what my mom would’ve done when I was a kid dealing with a nightmare. “How about I tuck you back in and talk with you until you’re sleepy again?”</p><p class="p1">She nods, so I stand up and get her back into bed before tucking her in. “Cozy?” I ask, and she nods again very slightly.</p><p class="p1">I walk around to the other side of the bed and climb on top of the bed coverings next to her. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”</p><p class="p1">She pulls the covers up so that just her eyes are peeking out over the top of the comforter.</p><p class="p1">“You know, your d—” I pause. For her, her dad is the one that raised her for four years, not Sam. I start again. “Sam lost his parents too. And I lost someone who was like my mom. I understand.” I brush a lock of hair away from her face and it feels weird, like an invasion of her personal space. But she’s my kid, and this is a stereotypically comforting act, isn’t it?</p><p class="p1">“It gets easier,” I finally say, in a lame conclusion. I’m still not sure what I’m doing. Throwing out reassurances and hoping some will stick.</p><p class="p1">“What was your mom like?” Faith asks, her voice muffled by the comforter.</p><p class="p1">“Hm.” I’m not sure if I should tell her about my actual mom or Nora, but settle for Nora. I haven’t spoken to my real mother in more than a decade, not since she found out I had a girlfriend and cut me out of her life. “My adopted mom was really selfless, and really wise.”</p><p class="p1">“Wise?”</p><p class="p1">“Smart. She took care of me when I was pregnant—with you, actually. It was a tough time but she helped me get through it.”</p><p class="p1">A small stretch of silence. “You gave me up because I was bad.”</p><p class="p1">My heart twinges. “No, sweetie, I… I wanted to give you the best life I could. I wanted to give you to parents who would really love you.”</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t really love me?”</p><p class="p1">Shit, this conversation with a five-year-old is way harder than I expected. But she’s kind of right, isn’t she? Nine months of a feeling of alienness, something not quite right with my body, until finally it was gone. Not my problem anymore.</p><p class="p1">“No, I mean…” How am I supposed to explain to her all the complexities that come with deciding to have a kid? How do I tell her that part of the reason I wanted her to have a new family is because I knew I was headed to Hell in a few years? She’s not going to understand any of that, so I settle with simple. “I’m sorry I gave you up. I wouldn’t have been able to be the mom you needed. But your mom could be.”</p><p class="p1">“My mom is gone because of me,” she says, and her voice is thick with tears. In the darkness, I hear her start to cry. “They said my parents weren’t good enough for me.”</p><p class="p1">“Hey… The people that took you from them, that took them from you… They’re bad people, and they lied to you. What happened to your parents happened because those demons are evil. Not because of you.”</p><p class="p1">She sniffles.</p><p class="p1">“How about I sing you a lullaby? To help you get back to sleep?”</p><p class="p1">She nods very slightly. I clear my throat. It’s been a while since I’ve sung. A really long time, actually. But I have a few lullabies ingrained in my head from when my mom sang them to me as a little kid, so it doesn’t take any effort to pull them to the top of my mind.</p><p class="p1">She closes her eyes and I sing softly. “<em>Los pollitos dicen, pío, pío, pío, cuando tienen hambre, cuando tienen frío.</em>”</p><p class="p1">She opens her eyes again and looks up at me, confused. “I don’t understand.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s Spanish. My grandma was Mexican, so she sang it to my mom when she was young, and then my mom sang it to me.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh. What does it mean?”</p><p class="p1">I tell her the words in Spanish and then translate them into English one line at a time, and by the time I’m halfway through the song, she’s asleep again.</p><p class="p1">I smile. Hey, maybe I’m not such a bad mom after all.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva is staying in Faith's room when Faith wakes her up after having a nightmare. Eva talks to her to help her get back to sleep. Faith wants to know why Eva gave her up as a baby, and Eva tries to explain. Faith feels her parents' death was her fault and Eva assures her it wasn't.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Demon Blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Dean finds out that Sam and Eva are together now; Faith has gone into withdrawal from demon blood, so they give her a little bit to help her feel better.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">I’ve just finished getting dressed when Faith stirs and blinks her eyes open sleepily.</p><p class="p1">“Good morning,” I say with a smile. My back is hurting a bit, from falling asleep sitting up in her bed, but otherwise I feel pretty well-rested. “Clothes and toiletries are here”—I say, pointing to a small bag on the floor that Dean had filled up with kid’s clothes during his supplies run—“and the bathroom is down the hall. What do you want for breakfast?”</p><p class="p1">“Pancakes,” she says, and yawns. I frown when I notice she looks a little bit pale.</p><p class="p1">“I’ll see what I can do.”</p><p class="p1">She nods a little bit.</p><p class="p1">I brush my teeth and wash up and then head downstairs.</p><p class="p1">I bump into Sam at the bottom of the stairs.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” I say, breathless, a thrill of happiness shooting through me<em>. He has feelings for me too.</em> It’s so surreal.</p><p class="p1">“Hey,” he says with a small smile. He glances up the stairs past me, his face becoming serious again. “How is she?”</p><p class="p1">“She had a nightmare last night. I think I hurt her feelings, but I got her back to sleep.”</p><p class="p1">Sam raises his eyebrows. “‘Hurt her feelings’?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah.” I glance back up the stairs and lower my voice. “She didn’t understand why I gave her up.”</p><p class="p1">“Hey, it’s okay,” Sam says, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. “She’s five. Of course it’s hard for her to get it right now. But she’ll understand eventually.”</p><p class="p1">I tilt my head, resting my cheek lightly against Sam’s palm. The corner of his mouth turns up and then he leans down and kisses me, a long, lingering kiss.</p><p class="p1">“Whoa,” I hear from a few feet away. We break apart and turn to look at Dean. “Whoa,” he says again, looking back and forth between the two of us. He holds up a finger and purses his lips. “Hold on. You wanna explain what’s going on here?”</p><p class="p1">“Adam fixed my Hell memories,” I say. “So…” I shrug. “I’m not scared anymore.”</p><p class="p1">Dean grins and looks at Sam. “And then you finally told her how you feel, huh?”</p><p class="p1">“Dean.” Sam’s voice is warning.</p><p class="p1">“Dean knew?” I ask, my voice a little higher-pitched than I would’ve liked it to be. I turn to Dean. “You knew? How long?”</p><p class="p1">“Since that ghost hunt,” he said. “When I found out the two of you did the dirty a few years ago.”</p><p class="p1">“That long?” I squeak.</p><p class="p1">“<em>Dean.</em>”</p><p class="p1">“Glad it finally worked out for you, little brother,” Dean says, slapping Sam’s arm, and then disappearing into the kitchen.</p><p class="p1">I turn back to Sam and raise an eyebrow.</p><p class="p1">“He can be really nosy sometimes,” Sam says in defense. At least he has the good grace to look sheepish.</p><p class="p1">I roll my eyes and follow Dean into the kitchen. Adam and Bobby are sitting at the kitchen table, Bobby flipping through a newspaper and Adam clicking through a website on one of Bobby’s old laptops. Sam slips past me and takes a seat next to Bobby. There are a couple of extra, mismatched chairs pulled up next to the table to provide seating for everyone, giving the room a crowded feel, but the house is kind of started to feel overcrowded anyway.</p><p class="p1">“Oh, um, Dean,” I say to him. “You’re making pancakes. A request from the kid.”</p><p class="p1">“Sure,” he says. He was already pulling breakfast materials from the cabinets and fridge—eggs, bacon, butter—but he starts to get out some baking stuff too.</p><p class="p1">“Good morning,” I say to Bobby and Adam, giving them a nod. “And”—I turn to Adam—“thank you so much for last night.” Bobby raises an eyebrow and I blush and rush to fill in the rest of the details. “For helping with the traumatic memories. By using your powers. I feel like a new person. Are you feeling better?”</p><p class="p1">“’Feeling better’?” Sam asks.</p><p class="p1">I wonder if I shouldn’t have mentioned it—Adam had been really dismissive about the nosebleed last night, which had happened both times I saw him use his powers—but he just nods and looks away. “Yeah, it just… takes a little bit out of me when I use the powers Michael gave me. Humans aren’t really supposed to have that kind of energy in them without an angel to hold them together.”</p><p class="p1">Sam and Dean exchange glances, looking alarmed.</p><p class="p1">Sam struggles a little bit to put together a question. “So are you—if you keep using your powers, what will happen?”</p><p class="p1">Adam shrugs. “I recover if I don’t use too much.”</p><p class="p1">“And if you <em>do</em> use too much?”</p><p class="p1">“I die.”</p><p class="p1">There’s a long, awkward silence, the only sound coming from the sizzling of butter in a frying pan.</p><p class="p1">“Well, uh. Try to avoid doing that, then,” I say. He doesn’t respond, so I add, “Really, though, I’m so grateful that you helped me out.”</p><p class="p1">“Sure,” he says, and he doesn’t smile, but he still looks satisfied.</p><p class="p1">“Eva?” a small voice from behind me says. I turn around. Faith is peeking her head into the kitchen, half-hidden by the wall. Her eyes are huge and scared as she looks into the crowded kitchen. She ducks behind the wall fully, out of sight from the others.</p><p class="p1">I follow her around the corner and crouch down. It feels kind of weird but it seems like the thing people do with kids. In the daylight, it’s even more obvious how pale she is, and she has dark circles under her eyes. She’s shaking a little bit, but it’s hard to tell if it’s from anxiety or something else. “Hey, sweetheart. Are you okay?”</p><p class="p1">She shakes her head. “I feel sick.”</p><p class="p1">I put a hand on her forehead. That gesture feels unnatural too, but it’s something parents do when their kid feels sick, right? She’s a regular temperature but a little clammy. I drop my hand. I have a suspicion on what’s going on, but I ask, “How do you feel sick?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s…” She takes a shuddering breath. “They used to give me a special drink that made me feel better.”</p><p class="p1">Yeah, I thought it might be withdrawal.</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” I say. I straighten up and pat her head. “How about you go help Dean make your pancakes, and I’ll talk to Sam about your special drink, okay? We’ll make you feel better soon.”</p><p class="p1">She nods. She scurries across the kitchen to Dean’s side. “Good morning,” he says. He glances at me and I can tell he noticed she’s not looking great either. “Here to help?” She nods, and he starts explaining to her basic kitchen safety and what she’s going to help with.</p><p class="p1">I nod for Sam to join me in the hall, and he stands up and follows.</p><p class="p1">“She’s going through withdrawal,” I say softly, once we’re out of earshot.</p><p class="p1">He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It was bound to happen soon.”</p><p class="p1">“What do we do?” I ask.</p><p class="p1">“I guess we give her some,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“How much is ‘some’? Do we give her as much as they did, or just a little until she feels better, or…?”</p><p class="p1">“As little as possible,” Sam says, without even a thought.</p><p class="p1">I nod. “So where did the blood go?”</p><p class="p1">Sam glances towards the kitchen. “It’s in the fridge.”</p><p class="p1">“The <em>fridge</em>?” I make a face. “Gross.”</p><p class="p1">“Our food has shared fridges with grosser stuff before,” Sam says, and I cringe. Yeah, he’s right. The stuff we’ve used for spells before has gone pretty far beyond disgusting.</p><p class="p1">“Well, she’s looking pretty awful right now, so we can give her a little with breakfast, maybe?”</p><p class="p1">Sam runs a hand down his face, looking tired. “Yeah. I’ll go get a little for her.”</p><p class="p1">We go back into the kitchen. Dean has Faith propped on his hip with a spatula in her hand. “Careful not to burn yourself when you flip it,” Dean is saying to her, and she gently flips over the pancake in the pan. There’s a light sizzle as the other side of the pancake starts to heat up.</p><p class="p1">Sam grabs a glass from a cabinet and goes to the fridge, inconspicuously opening it up and pouring a little of the blood into the cup just out of view of Faith. She doesn’t need to know we have an entire gallon of the stuff in the house. He only pours in a little bit, maybe half a cup worth of it.</p><p class="p1">Faith seems to sense the blood as soon as Sam has opened the jug of it, and she’s fully turned towards the fridge, her pupils dilated almost the edge of her irises. It’s actually terrifying to see the look on her face, like a shark sensing prey.</p><p class="p1">Sam straightens up so the blood is in Faith’s line of sight. She struggles in Dean’s arms and he puts her down. She rushes over to Sam and the glass of blood. I can see the horror on Dean’s face. It was tough enough for him to watch Sam’s demon blood addiction, and now he’s seeing it in a five-year-old girl. Bobby and Sam seem equal parts disconcerted and sad, though Adam doesn’t even look up from his computer.</p><p class="p1">“This should make you feel better,” Sam says, but he doesn’t move to give her the glass. He’s staring into the glass like he’s ready to drink it himself. She reaches up for it though, so he hesitantly passes it to her.</p><p class="p1">There’s not much, and she drinks the entire thing in one gulp. She wipes away a smudge of blood on her upper lip and holds up the glass. “More,” she demands.</p><p class="p1">“That’s all we have for now,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">Her eyes go black all the way to the edge of her irises again. “<em>More</em>,” she says more insistently, and suddenly my head explodes with pain. I feel like my skull is being crushed and I fall to my knees, gripping my head from the agony. It’s hard to concentrate, but I see Bobby and Dean, struggling through pain as well.</p><p class="p1">“Faith!” I hear distantly. Sam’s voice. “Faith, please, you’re hurting them.”</p><p class="p1">The pain starts to fade and I fall into a seated position on the floor, breathing hard. I should have known she was capable of this—she had thrown me across the room telepathically the first time we had met. But it’s still startling to see the display of power from her. She’s five years old, and she could kill me with no effort.</p><p class="p1">She’s crying now, and I can hear soft whimpers as she wipes her eyes with the back of her hands.</p><p class="p1">“Hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Sam says, crouched down in front of her.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to…”</p><p class="p1">“It’s okay,” Sam says again.</p><p class="p1">“I need more,” she pleads.</p><p class="p1">“We’ll give you more soon, okay? It’s really bad for you, so you can’t have too much.” She hesitates, but nods slightly. “Come on, let’s go sit down and let Dean finish making breakfast.”</p><p class="p1">Faith nods again a little bit, and he takes her hand and leads her to the other room, sitting her down on the couch. Her eyes are red and her nose is running, but it’s amazing how quickly she seems to have recovered to full health, with color in her cheeks and a much more solid presence. I warily make my way over to Sam and Faith. It’s hard not to feel on edge, so soon after a mental attack like that.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” she says, looking up at me with tearful eyes.</p><p class="p1">“It’s okay, sweetie,” I say, but my voice is coming across a little strained. I grab a tissue from an end table and pass it to her. She dabs at her nose a little bit. Not enough to be effective against the steady stream of snot (gross), but she’s five so I should probably give her a break. Sam takes the tissue from her and wipes her nose a little more thoroughly (<em>very</em> gross) which at least makes talking to her less distracting.</p><p class="p1">“We should probably talk to you about what the demon blood is doing to you,” Sam says to Faith.</p><p class="p1">“What?” she asks.</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” I say to her. “The special drink they gave you is demon blood.”</p><p class="p1">Tears well up in her eyes again. “B-blood?”</p><p class="p1">“It gives you special powers,” Sam says. “But it can make you very dangerous, too.” He lets out a long breath. “I used to drink demon blood too. It’s been a long time, but I know how addicting it can be.”</p><p class="p1">“Addicting?”</p><p class="p1">“It’s hard to stop drinking it.”</p><p class="p1">She nods a little bit.</p><p class="p1">Dean walks into the room with a plate with a couple of pancakes, topped with syrup and butter. “Breakfast is here,” he says, setting down the plate on the coffee table in front of her. He doesn’t have the caution I had when I came in; he seems sad, but he’s hiding it behind a convincing upbeat façade. He turns to go but Faith grabs the hem of his shirt and looks up at him pleadingly.</p><p class="p1">He gives her a reassuring smile and sits down next to her. “I don’t know what you were talking about but let’s forget about it for now, huh? Sam can go get some pancakes for the rest of us and we can enjoy breakfast in peace.”</p><p class="p1">Sam shoots a glare at Dean, but stands up. “Yeah. Let’s forget about it for now.”</p><p class="p1">Something I’m glad to do, but we can only put off the conversation for so long.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva is still excited that Sam feels something for her too. Dean catches them kissing and is surprised, so Eva tells him about how her hell memories were cured. She finds out that Dean had known Sam had had feelings for her for months at this point. When Faith comes downstairs, she tells Eva that she's not feeling well and that the drink that the demons had given her usually made her feel better. Sam and Eva give her a little bit of demon blood to help with the withdrawal but when they turn down her request for more, she psychically hurts Dean, Eva, and Bobby (Sam &amp; Adam are immune due to their respective demonic/angelic protection). Faith apologizes for hurting them and they tell her they need to talk to her about the effects the demon blood is having on her.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Magnus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They talk to Faith about her demon blood addiction; Eva searches for information on how to stop a painful withdrawal effect.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm sorry this took so long to post! 🙇🙇🙇</p><p>I reached the end of the plot I'd come up with and hit a dead end and it took a while to figure out where to go next. Hopefully, I'll be a little faster and more consistent now that I have an idea of where I'm headed. Thank you for reading.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">There’s no easy way to break it to a kid that the stuff she’s been drinking for the past year has slowly been making her evil. Especially when she has to ask us to define words like “aggression” and “withdrawal.” Really, it’s not a topic meant for kids.</p><p class="p1">It’s a long conversation, too. The blood will make you aggressive, violent, and impulsive. It gives you powers, but at a cost. Drinking demon blood will ultimately allow Lucifer to possess you. No, Lucifer isn’t a good guy. He’s done a lot of bad. A <em>lot</em> of bad. It’s going to be really hard to give up drinking demon blood—the withdrawal will be painful—but it has to happen.</p><p class="p1">But at the end of the conversation, there’s just one thing stuck on her mind. “I’m a bad person,” she says, sniffling and wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “It made me a bad person.”</p><p class="p1">“Listen,” Sam says. “There’s nothing wrong with you, okay? You’re not the demon blood. It might have changed you a little bit, but you have choices. You can do the right thing. You’re a good kid, Faith.”</p><p class="p1">“I hurt people,” she says quietly, and bows her head, refusing to look at me or Dean.</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t mean to,” Dean says. “It’s okay. We’re okay, all right? No one here is mad at you. No one here thinks you’re bad.”</p><p class="p1">She turns up her head to look at Dean through her tears. “Really?”</p><p class="p1">“Really, kiddo.”</p><p class="p1">“It’s gonna be okay,” I say. “We’re going to give you less and less until you’re back to normal, all right?”</p><p class="p1">She nods. Her voice is quiet when she says, “Okay.”</p><p class="p1">I exchange a worried look with Sam. Telling her about the dangers of demon blood was the easy part. Are we going to be able to go through a withdrawal process that will be like torture for a five-year-old?</p><p class="p1">We’re going to have some downtime for the next few days as we recoup and figure out what to do next, so Dean heads outside to work on the Impala, and Faith trails after him, anxiously throwing glances back at the house as she goes. It’s obvious that five new strangers have been a lot for her to handle over the course of two days, and it seems like Dean is the one she’s latched onto, with a little bit of comfort extended to me and Sam. It doesn’t help that she’s usually the center of our conversation. Five adults talking about her is probably not the most comfortable feeling in the world.</p><p class="p1">Once we’ve all split up, I find Adam and pull him aside.</p><p class="p1">“Can you cure her?” I ask Adam. “Like you did with my memories. Just use some of your angel powers and make it go away?”</p><p class="p1">“It doesn’t work like that,” Adam says, shaking his head. “Using my powers on her would burn her alive.”</p><p class="p1">“Shit.” I run a hand through my hair. “I just don’t want her to have to go through this. Isn’t there anything you can think of that might be able to fix it without the withdrawal?”</p><p class="p1">“Look, I get it, but I’m not a walking encyclopedia of all things Heaven and Hell. Michael gave me a little bit of his grace to work with and that’s it. I barely know what I’m doing half the time.”</p><p class="p1">“Michael didn’t give you any information?”</p><p class="p1">Adam glares at me. “Of course he did. But curing a child of a demon blood addiction was never part of the plan.”</p><p class="p1">I bite my lip. Yeah, that’s fair. “Okay. Okay. Thanks anyway.”</p><p class="p1">I slip by him and go to find Bobby. Surely he’s got enough books around that I can try to find <em>something</em> that will help. They didn’t find anything for Sam the first time around, but they didn’t really have time to look, did they?</p><p class="p1">Bobby directs me to the upstairs guest room. “There are all kinds of obscure shit up there,” he says. “Might find something worth using.”</p><p class="p1">So here I am, digging through boxes of relics cataloged in ratty, gray composition notebooks and flipping through lore books. There’s gotta be something, right? Something small.</p><p class="p1">I gingerly dig through a dusty cardboard box stuffed to the brim with old supernatural items. A crystal ball, a couple of amulets, a part of something that I’m pretty sure was alive at some point a long, long time ago. A lot of crap. I wonder where Bobby got all this stuff.</p><p class="p1">There’s a small wooden box near the bottom, and I pull it out. I hold it up. It’s got a symbol etched into the surface, all points. I slide open the box, and there’s a key inside, the same symbol at the top of the key. I slide the box shut again and frown. I’ve seen this symbol before. I try to place it, but it’s tough. I’ve seen a lot of symbols in my ten years of hunting.</p><p class="p1">It clicks and I remember. A journal.</p><p class="p1">I pull out my phone. I’d uploaded Nora’s journal into the cloud so I could access it even if it was lost. Which turns out to be a good thing, because the journal is stuck all the way in Colorado while I’m stranded up here in South Dakota.</p><p class="p1">I flip through the images until I get to the one I’m looking for. There’s an entry with the symbol that matches the one on the box in my hand. It’s drawn in a circle about the size of a quarter.</p><p class="p1">There are a few notes below it.</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Albert Magnus??</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Archives all over U.S.: NM, RI, VI, others??</em>
</p><p class="p1">
  <em>Greatest collection of supernatural knowledge in the world - IL or KS?</em>
</p><p class="p1">My heart skips a beat. Okay, so I didn’t find something useful in and of itself, but it might be a lead. I can only imagine what the greatest collection of supernatural knowledge in the world would contain—enough information to stop this second take at the Apocalypse, enough to cure Faith’s demon blood addiction, maybe even enough to help Adam in his quest to free Michael from the cage without letting Lucifer go.</p><p class="p1">It’s just a few notes. A symbol. A single key. Nothing concrete, nothing guaranteed. But this is all I’ve got at the moment.</p><p class="p1">I carry the key down into the kitchen, where Sam and Bobby are sitting at the table working on their computers—Sam said earlier that they were working on tracking demon signs and other notable events so they could try to keep track of where Isabel was.</p><p class="p1">I open up the box, and set it and the key down on the table.</p><p class="p1">“What did you find?” Sam says, looking up at me.</p><p class="p1">“Bobby, where did you get this key?”</p><p class="p1">Bobby glances down at it. “Hunter gave it to me a few years back. Not sure where he got it.”</p><p class="p1">“What does the symbol mean?”</p><p class="p1">“According to legend, it’s the symbol of the Men of Letters,” Bobby says.</p><p class="p1">“‘According to legend’?”</p><p class="p1">“Old hunter’s myth. The Men of Letters are collectors of supernatural lore.”</p><p class="p1">“How do you know it’s not real?”</p><p class="p1">“No hunter I’ve ever met has found any evidence they’re real. An organization like that, there’s not a chance no hunter’s come across something if they were actually real.” He frowns. “Why? You find something?”</p><p class="p1">“Maybe,” I say. “You ever heard the name, Albert Magnus?”</p><p class="p1">Both of them shake their heads. I sigh. “Okay. I’ve got a little more digging to do, I’ll let you know what I find.”</p><p class="p1">I turn to leave and then hesitate. Sam’s right here. I’ve been preoccupied since last night when we told each other how we feel, but I should take advantage of the fact I know we have reciprocated feelings.</p><p class="p1">Feeling kind of awkward, I put my hand on Sam’s chin and tilt his face up to me. I bend down to press a kiss to his cheek before straightening back up.</p><p class="p1">He hums and then pulls me back down, pressing his lips against mine, and I savor it, feeling warmth spread through my body from where our lips meet, where his hand is resting lightly on my arm.</p><p class="p1">A throat clears and we pull away. I lick my lips and smile at Sam, and he smiles back at me. “Get a room,” Bobby says gruffly, before tapping away at his laptop.</p><p class="p1">“Later,” Sam says softly, pecking me on the lips one more time. “Promise.”</p><p class="p1">Bobby shoots us both a look. God. Prude. I roll my eyes and go to use the computer in the other room.</p><p class="p1">It takes some digging on the little information Nora provided—<em>Albert Magnus</em>—but I finally start to find a trail.</p><p class="p1"><em>Tragic Fire at Gentlemen’s Club, 4 Dead, </em>the article title reads. <em>1958. </em>I skim the article. The four deceased: Larry Ganem, David Ackers, Ted Bowen, and there—Albert Magnus.</p><p class="p1">I look into each of them individually.</p><p class="p1">Ganem, Ackers, and Bowen were all businessmen with unclearly defined jobs, well-respected in their communities, although I do find some mentions of Ackers on a supernatural lore site.</p><p class="p1">Magnus, however, never existed.</p><p class="p1">No documentation, no family, no mentions of him in any of the information on the others. All I can find is that he died twice—in 1905 and again in 1958—and that he’s buried at a cemetery in Illinois, along with the other three men. Records were a little sketchier sixty years ago, so maybe he was just off the books, but I feel in my gut that this is important.</p><p class="p1">“Hey, Sam,” I call, and Sam peeks his head into the room. “Come check this out.”</p><p class="p1">“What did you find?” he asks, coming over and looking over my shoulder.</p><p class="p1">“The name in Nora’s journal. There’s no evidence he existed, except for the fact he died twice, fifty years apart, and then was buried with the others.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” Sam says, waiting for further explanation.</p><p class="p1">“I mean, if he’s not real… Who—or what—is buried in his grave? Maybe the name was planted there. By the Men of Letters. Maybe it was left as a clue to lead us here.” I tap the screen, where there’s a map of Illinois with a pin dropped over the cemetery where Magnus is buried.</p><p class="p1">“I don’t know if we have time to go traipsing on a wild goose chase,” Sam says, after a moment.</p><p class="p1">“Come on, Sam!” I say with a huff. “This would be a motherlode of information. We could turn the tides with this. And it would just be a day. Eight hours there, check it out, and if we don’t find anything, eight hours home.”</p><p class="p1">He seems hesitant but nods finally. “Okay. Yeah, I’ll go with you. Let’s talk to the others about it.”</p><hr/><p class="p1">“That’s a dumb fucking idea,” Dean says, as soon as he hears about the trip we’re making. “We can’t split up while we’re being hunted by demons just to go check out something that might be a lead on something that probably doesn’t exist.”</p><p class="p1">“I just have a feeling about this,” I say.</p><p class="p1">Dean sighs and passes a hand over his face. He looks at Bobby for support. “Aren’t you going to tell her that this is pointless?”</p><p class="p1">Bobby shrugs. “We got anything better? It’s worth a shot.”</p><p class="p1">Dean rolls his eyes. “Fine. We can make it tonight if drive fast.”</p><p class="p1">“No, no, no,” I say. “Not ‘we.’ You’re staying here.”</p><p class="p1">“No, I’m not. If the demons come after you…”</p><p class="p1">“Dean, Faith is really attached to you,” Sam says. “She’s been through enough change in the past few days, she can’t come to Illinois with us, and we can’t leave her here without someone she trusts. No offense,” he adds to Bobby and Adam, who raise their eyebrows but don’t respond.</p><p class="p1">Dean opens his mouth to protest, and then closes it. He looks past us into the living room, where Faith is playing with some of her legos. “I’ll stay,” he says, and looks back at us. “But you’d better be back in thirty-six hours or I’ll kick your asses.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TDLR: Sam, Dean, and Eva talk to Faith about the demon blood and what it means. Faith is worried the blood has made her a bad person but they assure her she's not. Eva asks Adam if he can cure the addiction the way he'd cured her trauma, but he says the angelic power he would use would only have a harmful effect on a child with demon blood. Eva looks for another way to avoid the painful withdrawal effects and stumbles on a box with a key and the Men of Letters symbol; a note in her old mentor's journal leaves only the name <i>Albert Magnus</i> and the promise of the greatest collection of supernatural lore in the country, something she desperately wants to access. She does some research and finds out that Albert Magnus was not a real person, but that he was reported to have died in 1958 and been buried in Illinois. If he wasn't real, there must be something buried there, so Sam and Eva go to investigate.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Grave Digging</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam and Eva drive to Illinois to look for clues that will lead them to the Men of Letters archive.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Un-beta'd. I'm apologize. I'm also sorry it's a lot of plot and not a lot of character stuff but it'll get back on track soon, I swear.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">It feels nice to be on the road again, with a simple destination and a simple, straightforward mission, and someone who will help the eight hours in the car go by fast.</p><p class="p1">We borrow one of Bobby’s old beaters from the yard, because even after all our time together, Sam is still the only one that Dean will let drive the Impala and Sam is going to need <em>some</em> sleep.</p><p class="p1">“So what’s it like?” Sam asks as we get on the highway.</p><p class="p1">“What’s what like?”</p><p class="p1">“Being healed like that. What does thinking about Hell feel like?”</p><p class="p1">I shrug. “It feels like it happened to someone else. I remember what happened. I don’t really remember how it felt.”</p><p class="p1">He throws me a glance, hesitating. “It’s not… Distressing? For you to talk about it?”</p><p class="p1">“I guess not.” I can see where this is going. He’s curious. Of course he is.</p><p class="p1">“You said you’d been rescued once before,” he says. “In Hell. So they could give you hope and take it away.”</p><p class="p1">I let out a long breath. “You want to know what happened?”</p><p class="p1">“If you feel comfortable talking about it.”</p><p class="p1">I shrug. “I mean, yeah. It was kind of like… a fantasy rescue,” I say, and a blush creeps across my face. “By you.”</p><p class="p1">“Me and Dean?”</p><p class="p1">“Ah… Just you. Well, a demon that looked like you.”</p><p class="p1">He raises an eyebrow but lets me continue.</p><p class="p1">“You saved me and brought me back to earth and patched me up and then, uh.” I rub the back of my neck.</p><p class="p1">“Then?”</p><p class="p1">“You told me you loved me.”</p><p class="p1">“Oh,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“And then you spent a few days doting on me and calling me dopey names. Beautiful, sweetie, darling.”</p><p class="p1">“Is that… Something you like?”</p><p class="p1">I shake my head. “Nah. I thought it was weird. Part of the reason I caught on that something was off.”</p><p class="p1">“Dopey names are off the table from now on then, huh?” he says.</p><p class="p1">I laugh. “They were never on the table to begin with.”</p><p class="p1">He smiles, then asks, “So when did the other shoe drop?”</p><p class="p1">“After a nightmare. No comfort, just torture.” I frown. The memory feels distant, disconnected. A taunting, cruel voice:<em> You were so close! You thought you’d made it.</em> I shiver. It doesn’t give me the same level of horror that it used to, and I don’t feel the urge to bury it and think about something else, anything else, the way I would when it still haunted me. But it’s still an uncomfortable thought. How close I was to being stuck there forever. Like so many condemned souls are.</p><p class="p1">“I’m sorry,” Sam says. “And the rest of your time in Hell?”</p><p class="p1">“You. The whole time, almost.” I smile bitterly. “He was kind of sweet sometimes. The benevolent torturer.”</p><p class="p1">”God, Eva…”</p><p class="p1">I let out a long breath. “I’m just so grateful Adam helped. I just… It was so hard, it hurt so much these past couple of months, knowing that I loved you but also not being able to.”</p><p class="p1">A beat, as we both realize what I said. “You love me?” Sam asks.</p><p class="p1">I sink down in my seat a little, my cheeks on fire. “I don’t know. I mean. Do you…?”</p><p class="p1">He doesn’t reply, just glances at me from the corner of his eye and smiles. Great. That’s reassuring.</p><p class="p1">“You know how my three-month vacation was, now tell me about yours,” I say, wanting to get the conversation off of my slip-up.</p><p class="p1">“When you were gone?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah.”</p><p class="p1">He’s silent as he thinks about it. “I’ve lost a lot of people,” he says, not quite a statement. “It was… different with you. You were gone, and there was so much there that we’d never gotten a chance to explore. I should’ve told you how I felt the minute I found out about your deal.”</p><p class="p1">“It would’ve made it worse,” I say, thinking of how many times I wanted to tell him. “Having it and then losing it. It would be better not to see what it would’ve been like at all.”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t think I would’ve regretted it,” Sam says. “At least I wouldn’t be left wondering what could have been.”</p><p class="p1">I nod. Still not sure I agree, but I see what he’s getting at.</p><p class="p1">We finish the rest of the car ride in comfortable conversation about nothing in particular, or napping, or listening to the radio. At one point, Sam nods at a sign to a town called <em>Normal.</em> “My dad grew up there,” he says, but he doesn’t offer any more than that, so I let it drop. John Winchester is a touchy subject with the boys.</p><p class="p1">We switch off driving a couple of times and we manage to make it to the small cemetery near Lexington, Illinois at around one in the morning.</p><p class="p1">It’s pretty small. A couple of hundred gravestones, maybe, all situated in front of a small wooden church at the end of a dirt road. We grab our shovels from the trunk and walk around, looking for the graves of the Men of Letters: Ganem, Ackers, Bowen, Magnus.</p><p class="p1">“There,” Sam says, nodding to a row of four simple headstones. Each has a name engraved, the date of birth and death, and a symbol, up at the top. The Men of Letters symbol. This is it.</p><p class="p1">I sigh. Digging graves is the worst part of any hunt, and now is no exception. “I guess we should get to work.”</p><p class="p1">I help, of course, but I take plenty of breaks to watch Sam work. What’s the point of all that working out if he’s not going to put those muscles to good use? He raises his eyebrows when he notices me staring and brushes a lock of sweaty hair out of his face. “You gonna put in any work?”</p><p class="p1">I start digging again. “I’ve never said anything before, but hot and sweaty is a good look on you.”</p><p class="p1">He pauses. “Yeah?”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah.” I blush, thankful the night is hiding my reddening cheeks. As we keep digging, I can’t help but think of all the things I’d like to do with his hot and sweaty body, if only we weren’t covered in dirt and standing in a grave.</p><p class="p1">My thoughts are interrupted when we hit the wood of a coffin. I scramble out of the grave so Sam can open it. He tugs open the lid, sending dirt sliding off and to the side.</p><p class="p1">There’s a body there, old and desiccated bones, dressed in a World War I uniform. Sure, from the wrong time period, but plenty of people are buried in their military uniforms.</p><p class="p1">“Hm,” I say, feeling a little confused, and a little embarrassed. “I guess I thought we wouldn’t find an actual body here. I guess my lead wasn’t anything after all.”</p><p class="p1">“No, wait,” Sam says. He brushes some dust off of two metal circles on a chain around the man’s neck—old-school dog tags. “‘Thomas J. Carey III,’” he reads.</p><p class="p1">“So… Not Albert Magnus,” I say.</p><p class="p1">“Doesn’t look like it,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“This has to mean something,” I say. “They wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of planting a name in an article and burying a body if this wasn’t a trail to follow.”</p><p class="p1">Sam tugs on the chain and snaps it off, the dog tags still in hand.</p><p class="p1">I have my phone out, trying to look up Thomas J. Carey III. No signal. “I guess we should cover this up and find somewhere with cell coverage, huh?”</p><p class="p1">“This had better be something,” Sam says. “If you make me come back here and dig this up again to look for more hints, I’m going to be pissed.”</p><p class="p1">I roll my eyes. “This is something. I’ve just got a feeling.”</p><p class="p1">“A feeling. Hm. Like that time you had a feeling we were facing a werewolf and it turned out to be a ghost, and we almost got killed?”</p><p class="p1">I scowl at him and pick up my shovel to start filling the grave back in. “No, not like that. I’m going to be right this time.”</p><p class="p1">He laughs but helps me fill it in. It takes a while, but eventually, we pack down the last of the dirt, toss the shovels in the trunk, and flop back into our seats in the car, dirty and spent.</p><p class="p1">“I could go for a nap,” I say.</p><p class="p1">In response, Sam passes me a thermos of barely warm coffee. We don’t have a lot of time to waste, since this is supposed to be a quick trip, so I scowl and take the thermos from him. It’ll hardly be the first time I’ve stayed up for two days straight.</p><p class="p1">We stop at a 24-hour diner that (fortunately) has WiFi, split a piece of pie, and take out our laptops for some research. With our resources, it doesn’t take long to find what we’re looking for.</p><p class="p1">“Thomas J. Carey III,” Sam says, looking at his screen, just as I polish off the last of the pie. “Looks like he bought a house about a year after he was buried.”</p><p class="p1">“See, I knew it was something,” I say, gloating, and Sam gives me an unimpressed look. I clear my throat. “Where’s the house?”</p><p class="p1">“Rural Missouri,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“Let’s go,” I say. I toss a twenty on the table and stand up to leave. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can get back to the others. The sooner we’ll find—hopefully—this legendary archive that might have something that will cure Faith’s addiction.</p><p class="p1">I try not to get my hopes up too much. It’ll only hurt more if this turns out to be nothing and, with what it’s promising, it <em>does</em> seem too good to be true.</p><p class="p1">But a lot of good has happened in the past couple of days, and it’s hard not to be optimistic. Things might turn out okay.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva tells Sam about her first "rescue" in Hell, and then she lets it slip that she loves Sam. They find the grave of Albert Magnus and dig it up, revealing the body of a World War I vet, Thomas J. Carey III. They look into the man and find he had bought a house in Missouri one year after he'd been buried, so they head to that house.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Men of Letters</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sam and Eva follow the trail of Albert Magnus to a house in Missouri, where they find Henry Winchester's journal.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading, if you've made it this far :)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">We stop once to catch up on some sleep, but we make it to the house out in the middle of nowhere around dawn. We get out of the car and look at the house in front of us.</p><p class="p1">I was hoping we’d find someone here, someone to send us in the right direction, but it’s obvious as soon as we see it that this house has been abandoned for decades. It might’ve been a nice once, but it’s not anymore. The once-white exterior is worn down to a dull gray all over, and pieces of wood are falling off the sides and roof of the house. Thin, ugly vines grow up out of the ground and choke the house.</p><p class="p1">I look over at Sam. “Sure this is the right place?”</p><p class="p1">He nods.</p><p class="p1">I take a deep breath and head towards the steps up towards the house. He hurries over to me and catches my arm.</p><p class="p1">“Watch it,” he says. He nods at a tripwire near my feet. I scowl as he goes to disarm it. I guess I should’ve expected a little security.</p><p class="p1">I follow Sam as he circles the house, looking for any more traps. There are sigils and wards painted on some parts of the house, nearly as worn as the rest of the place, and Sam scrapes through the paint to break them. Finally, he determines it’s safe and we head inside.</p><p class="p1">It’s the same lifeless gray inside as it was outside, everything weather-worn and falling apart.</p><p class="p1">But the thing we notice most immediately upon coming inside is the blood. It’s dried now, dark and almost black, but there’s a lot of it: splashes on the floor, the walls, streaks leading into another room filled with smashed and flipped furniture.</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” I say. “So… <em>Something</em> happened here.”</p><p class="p1">“Do you recognize this symbol?” Sam says, tracing a hand over a large symbol drawn in blood on the wall. It looks something like a curved 7 with two lines on the inside of the curve.</p><p class="p1">I shake my head. “Never seen it before.”</p><p class="p1">“There’s got to be something else here,” Sam says. “Careful for any more traps.”</p><p class="p1">He looks around in the room, and I head upstairs. There’s a bedroom here, a simple layout of a bed, nightstand, and desk. The desk has a lamp, a pen, and a decayed piece of paper on it. I lean in closer to look at the paper, but any words that might’ve been there once are long gone, washed away by time and weather. I take a step back and the floor creaks. I look down and press on the floor again. Definitely a loose floorboard.</p><p class="p1">I reach down and take out my knife to pry it up. Here, in a spot under the floor—there’s a tightly sealed box. I pull it out of its hiding space and open it. There’s a journal inside, worn leather, a lot like Sam and Dean’s dad’s journal. Runes and protective sigils cover the surface. I reach in the box to pick it up but the runes flare red-hot when I touch it and it burns my hand. I yelp and pull my hand back. Okay, it’s like that then. I pick up the entire box and bring it down to Sam.</p><p class="p1">“Sam, I found something,” I say as I reach the bottom of the stairs. He looks at the box I’m holding out. “There are these sigils on it—”</p><p class="p1">Before I can finish warning him, he picks it up. I flinch, expecting it to burn him, too, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. What the hell…?</p><p class="p1">He flips it open before I get a chance to ask, and there scratched into the leather on the inside cover is a set of coordinates: <em>39.8427N, 98.6383W</em>. “That’s the geographic center of the contiguous United States,” Sam says, and then his eye catches something else.</p><p class="p1">The only words on the first page of the journal, written under the Men of Letters symbol: <em>Henry Winchester</em>.</p><p class="p1">“A relation of yours?” I ask. I knew their mom’s side of the family was full of hunters, but I thought their dad was the first of the Winchesters.</p><p class="p1">“My dad’s dad,” Sam says, running his hand over the ink on the page. “I never really heard much about him. He walked out on my dad when my dad was just a kid…”</p><p class="p1">“Walked out, why?”</p><p class="p1">Sam shrugs. “This couldn’t be the same Henry Winchester, could it?”</p><p class="p1">“Knowing your family? I’d be surprised if it wasn’t.”</p><p class="p1">“I need to call Dean,” Sam says. He pulls out his phone but, no surprise, there is no signal here.</p><p class="p1">“Here,” I say, reaching to take the journal from Sam. Whatever magic was on it before must’ve been made inert after—“Ow!” It burns me again and I drop it. I stare at my hand, half a sigil in an angry red across my palm.</p><p class="p1">“Are you okay?” Sam asks. He bends down and picks up the book. Again, no issue.</p><p class="p1">“Why does the journal like you more?” I whine.</p><p class="p1">He flips it over in his hands, looking at the marks on it. He taps one. “This makes it so the object can only be touched by the person who made the sigil.”</p><p class="p1">“You didn’t make the sigil,” I say.</p><p class="p1">He frowns and studies it closer. “It’s blood-based,” he says. “Maybe…”</p><p class="p1">He seems hesitant to continue with his conclusion, so I finish for him. “Maybe it goes down the family line? I think this is your grandpa’s journal, Sam. He was one of them. One of the Men of Letters.”</p><p class="p1">“But we would’ve known, right?” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“No disrespect, but chances are that Henry’s dead,” I tell him. “He didn’t get a chance to tell you. He probably never got a chance to tell your dad, either.”</p><p class="p1">“Yeah,” Sam says. He opens the journal again, absently flips through its pages. Like their dad’s, it’s full of drawings, notes, newspaper clippings. And the same symbol that’s on the wall in blood, again and again. Sam finally stops on one of those pages. <em>MARK OF CAIN</em>, a caption says.</p><p class="p1">“What…?” I start to say, and then we hear gravel crunching and see headlights flash through the curtains.</p><p class="p1">“We were followed,” Sam says, and he pulls out his gun. I peek through the window. Two black SUVs pull up, and four people climb out of each. I see black eyes on one of them—demons.</p><p class="p1">Shit. Eight against two—that’s not good odds, even if our opponents didn’t have supernaturally enhanced strength and powers.</p><p class="p1">I tuck away my gun and pull out an angel blade instead; Sam takes out the demon knife.</p><p class="p1">“We might be able to get out the back, circle around,” Sam says.</p><p class="p1">“There’s two of them standing guard by the cars,” I say, glancing at the situation through the crack in the curtains again. “We couldn’t escape without drawing the others back out.”</p><p class="p1">“Shit,” Sam says. “There any salt in this house…?”</p><p class="p1">“Whoa,” I say. Two of the demons have reached the top of the steps and seem to have been stopped by something. They clutch their throats and black smoke starts to pour out of them. I gesture Sam over. “Look at this.”</p><p class="p1">“This house,” he says, realization dawning on his face. “Henry must’ve rigged traps for demons everywhere.”</p><p class="p1">“Any sigils you didn’t destroy that we could draw them towards?” I ask. He frowns, thinking, and then I snap my fingers. “Upstairs, come on.” I throw one last look out the window—the remaining demons are working on disabling the trap that took out the first two, so we have a little time, but not much.</p><p class="p1">I sprint up the stairs and Sam follows me. I go into the room where I found Henry’s journal. “Here,” I say, pointing at a sigil on the wall, the same blackish-brown color as the blood downstairs. It’s circle-shaped, with a handprint right in the middle of it. “Remind you of something?”</p><p class="p1">“Angel banishing sigil,” Sam says. “But not quite the same.”</p><p class="p1">“See anything like it in the book?”</p><p class="p1">“I don’t think there’s time—” He’s interrupted by the pounding of footsteps on wood.</p><p class="p1">I run my blade deep across my wrist and start using the blood to copy the sigil on the wall. “Okay, then, I hope this works.”</p><p class="p1">The first demon breaks into the room as I finish up the last two lines of the sigil.</p><p class="p1">“Eva?” Sam says. He ducks under one of the demons and stabs it in the back, and it falls to the ground, dead. “Any time now.”</p><p class="p1">Four more demons push into the room just as I finish the sigil and Sam backs up, standing between me and them and holding his knife up defensively. I smear some more blood over my hand, enough to be able to make the sigil work, and glance at the demons. One has its gun up, pointed at me.</p><p class="p1">Sam moves between me and the demon just as a gunshot goes off.</p><p class="p1">“Sam!” I say, slamming my hand against the sigil as he collapses to the floor. I close my eyes as the room fills with blinding red light, and when I open them, the four demons are gone.</p><p class="p1">I run over to Sam and kneel next to him.</p><p class="p1">“Sam,” I say again, my hands hovering over him as I’m unsure what to do, unsure how hurt he is.</p><p class="p1">“I’m okay,” he says, sitting up and pressing a hand against his shoulder. He winces. There’s already blood oozing past his fingers. “Just hit my shoulder.”</p><p class="p1">Relief rushes through me. “God, I was so worried.”</p><p class="p1">He gives me a pained smile. “I’m the sacrifice, right? They can’t kill me just yet.”</p><p class="p1">I grab his free hand and help him up to his feet. “Just two more demons and we can get out of here and get back to the others.”</p><p class="p1">Once Sam is up, he bends down and picks up the journal and his knife from the floor. He tucks the journal into a large inside pocket of his jacket where it just barely fits.</p><p class="p1">I glance at the knife in his hand. “I don’t think you’re going to be using that,” I say. “You just got shot.”</p><p class="p1">“I’m fine,” he says. “Go.”</p><p class="p1">I raise my eyebrows but head back into the hall to the top of the stairs, Sam stumbling behind me.</p><p class="p1">The two remaining demons are making their way up the stairs. Sam flips his blade in his hand and hurls it at one of them. It flies past the demon and embeds itself into the wall. During the split-second distraction, I land a solid kick in the center of the chest of the demon at the top of the stairs—a big, bulky guy--and he falls backward, tumbling down the stairs and bringing the other demon with him.</p><p class="p1">“I <em>told</em> you,” I say, running down the stairs. Sam follows, grabbing his knife from the wall as we go. The demons are back up by the time we make it to the bottom of the stairs. I take one, Sam takes the other, and it’s a short, intense fight. I dodge out of the way of a swing of the knife from the bigger demon, but he knees me in the stomach and I stumble backward, gasping for breath. The demon starts to move again until a blade appears through his chest and he falls to the ground, dead.</p><p class="p1">“What the hell?” I ask Sam. “I could’ve taken him.”</p><p class="p1">“I know,” he says, already heading out the door.</p><p class="p1">“You’re still wounded!” I say, following him out of the house and to the car.</p><p class="p1">“I know.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re such a showoff.”</p><p class="p1">“I know,” he says, flashing me a quick smile as we reach the car. “Now come on, we need to get out of here before they send backup.”</p><p class="p1">He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I can’t wait to get away from this messed-up house.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TL;DR: Sam and Eva follow the trail of Albert Magnus to an abandoned house in rural Missouri. There are ancient blood spatters in the house, and the Mark of Cain drawn on a wall in blood. They find the journal of Henry Winchester, Sam and Dean's grandfather. The journal is enchanted so that only those related by blood to the owner of the journal can open it; Sam does, and they find coordinates for the geographic center of the U.S. Demons show up, and Sam and Eva manage to escape, though Sam gets shot.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Kiss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eva patches up Sam's wound and hopes to make use of their alone time.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">We get a motel room for the afternoon. We both need at least some sleep, and we need to dig the bullet out of Sam and get him some stitches. I sit him down on one of the beds and seat myself next to him with a first aid kit so I can get to work.</p><p class="p1">“It’s been a while since we’ve done this,” Sam says, and then hisses as I dig into the wound and pull the bullet out.</p><p class="p1">“I know,” I say. “It’s an essential hunter bonding experience. Also romantic.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re joking, but you’re right,” he says, looking over at me with half-lidded eyes. He leans in and presses a light kiss to my lips.</p><p class="p1">“Okay,” I say, pushing him away. “We need to get you stitched up first. Then I’ll give you a real kiss.”</p><p class="p1">“We just haven’t really had time till now…”</p><p class="p1">“We still don’t have time,” I say. “Come on, aren’t you hurting too much for this?”</p><p class="p1">“I’ve got high pain tolerance. Professional perks.”</p><p class="p1">Now that the bullet’s out, I stitch up the wound in silence as Sam occasionally sips from the whiskey bottle he pulled out at some point after we arrived in the motel room. I tape some gauze over the wound.</p><p class="p1">“All done,” I say. “Bet you’re not in the mood anymore, huh?”</p><p class="p1">In response, he kisses me long and hard, and every thought leaves my brain. I’ve waited so long for this. For what I know will come next. I’ve imagined this again and again, clinging to a long-ago memory of a hook-up. I can let go of that now, because I have him here, right in front of me.</p><p class="p1">Unthinking, my hand slides up his chest and over his shoulder and he gasps.</p><p class="p1">“Oh, shit,” I say. “I totally forgot. We don’t have to—”</p><p class="p1">“I want to, Eva,” he says, his voice low. “So, so bad.”</p><p class="p1">That’s all he has to say. “Okay,” I say, breathless. I swing a leg over him so I’m straddling his lap and kiss him again, running my tongue gently along his lips, pressing for an invitation. His mouth opens just slightly and my tongue pushes inside, meeting his. My hands roam over his chest, his neck, his shoulders—but I’m careful to avoid his wound this time.</p><p class="p1">Only a minute has passed when Sam picks me up and turns around, depositing me on my back on the bed. I squeak in surprise, but excitement is building within me. He slides up my shirt and presses kisses up my stomach, my skin burning wherever his lips touch. God, it strikes me that I’m wearing way too much. I want to feel his lips all over me, I want to feel him everywhere, right now.</p><p class="p1">He pulls back for a moment and my eyes catch his—they’re full of hungry desire and I’ve seen those eyes before—surrounded by hellfire and followed by pain and—panic rushes through me—my breath is coming hard and fast now, my heart beating fast, and I scramble out from beneath Sam.</p><p class="p1">“Eva?” he says, his voice full of concern, his eyebrows drawn together.</p><p class="p1">“Sorry, I…” I squeeze my eyes shut and draw my knees up to my chest. The jolt of panic that had gone through me is already starting to fade, my heart slowly, very slowly, returning back to normal. “I don’t know what happened.”</p><p class="p1">“I thought you were healed,” he says.</p><p class="p1">“I thought I was too,” I say softly, blinking my eyes open. “And I am. Mostly. I just… I don’t know what came over me. Just for a second, it felt like I was there…”</p><p class="p1">“Hey, it’s okay,” he says. “I know these things aren’t exactly simple.” He shifts and then hesitates. “Can I… can I come over by you?”</p><p class="p1">I nod. “Yeah, I’m okay now.” He gets up and slides onto the bed next to me, both of us now leaning back against the headboard. He wraps an arm around my shoulder and I lean my head against him. “Sorry,” I say again.</p><p class="p1">“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” he says. There’s a long moment of silence. “Listen, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”</p><p class="p1">“This?”</p><p class="p1">“Us.”</p><p class="p1">I pull back and stare up at him, my eyes wide. “What? Are you serious?” My heart is beating fast again, but for a different reason. I’d been so thrilled when he told me how he felt just a couple of days ago and now he wants to break things off?</p><p class="p1">“For now,” he adds quickly. “The effects of Hell aren’t all gone and you need more time to heal. I know we jumped into things kind of fast—”</p><p class="p1">“No, we didn’t,” I say. “We were acting on unresolved romantic tension that’s been going on almost as long as we’ve known each other.”</p><p class="p1">“You avoided me and Dean for months after you got back,” he says. “You told us you didn’t need us and took off.”</p><p class="p1">I cringe. “That was different. I was in a different place, mentally.”</p><p class="p1">“You’re not where you were then, but you’re also not where you were before Hell,” he says. “You never will be.”</p><p class="p1">“What is that supposed to mean?”</p><p class="p1">He sighs, runs a hand through his hair.</p><p class="p1">“I mean that you need time to work out what changes Adam’s powers had on you. What sets you off, what doesn’t. I’m your strongest association to Hell—”</p><p class="p1">“Sam,” I interrupt, but he continues.</p><p class="p1">“—And who knows. I might undo the healing. You could get worse again.”</p><p class="p1">“Okay, but what about facing my fears, hm?” I say, desperately trying to find an argument. “I have to be around what scares me to get over it, right?”</p><p class="p1">“I just…” Sam sighs. “I just can’t stand that what scares you is me. The look in your eyes, I… I don’t want to see that again. I don’t want to be the reason you feel afraid.”</p><p class="p1">Tears well up in my eyes. I hadn’t even considered how it must feel for him. The woman he cares about, totally terrified of him…</p><p class="p1">“I understand,” I finally say, snuggling up next to him ago, though I know we’re not going to be doing anything else. “Maybe a little space for a bit wouldn’t be so bad. But just for a little bit, okay?”</p><p class="p1">“Sure,” he says. He presses a kiss to the top of my head.</p><p class="p1">Still, I’m still not sure if I can handle “a little bit.” The disappointment feels almost crushing, so I change the subject. “Now that you’re patched up, should we head back to Bobby’s?”</p><p class="p1">He sighs. “I could use some sleep.”</p><p class="p1">“Me too,” I say, yawning. “Just a nap and we can go back, right? I’m worried about Faith.”</p><p class="p1">“I get that,” he says. “Yeah, just a couple of hours.”</p><p class="p1">We got two beds—what the motel had available—and I glance over at the other bed. If we’re not together, for now, does that mean I should sleep there instead of with him?</p><p class="p1">“You can stay here,” Sam says, as if reading my thoughts. “If you want.”</p><p class="p1">I smile. “Okay.” I lean over and set the radio alarm clock for four hours from now. “Four hours okay?”</p><p class="p1">Sam nods. I click off the light and crawl under the covers. He climbs in a moment later, and I scoot so I’m the little spoon to his big spoon. His arm drapes over my side. Sex is off the table for now, but this is almost as good.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>TLDR: Eva patches up Sam's bullet wound. They start to get intimate but it triggers an unexpected Hell flashback for Eva; Sam is upset that he's the cause of Eva's distress and insists they keep some space between them for now until Eva gets a better handle on what sets her off or doesn't.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>[Chapter 1 TL;DR: Eva has kept it hidden from Sam and Dean that she sold her soul ten years ago for her ex-girlfriend's life. During a hunt, a demon reveals that she has one month before going to Hell. Sam and Dean are upset that she lied, but promise to help get her through it.]</p><p>Thoughts and comments are appreciated!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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